by Dr. Amanda Degenhardt – PGY-3

Speaker Highlights

Dr. David Goldbloom
The opening keynote plenary included Dr. Goldbloom and his co-author Dr. Bryden. Together, with a patient and family member, they discussed writing about patients, their families, and their psychiatrists in an effort to improve understanding and fight stigma. This was based on their new novel, How Can I Help? A week in My Life as a Psychiatrist, and was a very interesting topic to hear as they spoke candidly about their personal experiences.

Dr. Raymond Lam (et al.)
Dr. Lam presented in the Continuing Professional Development Institute as well as being part of the workshop summarizing the new CANMAT guidelines. All of his lectures were standing room only. The CPD lecture emphasized the importance of restoring function in MDD and impact of treatment on quality of life and discussed different ways to measure this in clinical practice.

Dr. Mamta Gautam
Physician suicide and caring for our peers is a challenge for many clinicians. Dr. Gautam, a pioneer in physician health and founder of the first university physician wellness program, was the recognized Distinguished CPA member. She presented on the stigma associated with mental illness in the medical field and how to manage medical students or physicians in your practice. She provided the key risk factors, screening questions, and effective management that is unique to this population. This was a very important topic, with us all being affected to some degree or another, by someone in the medical community, that has been lost by suicide.

Resident Track
The Canadian Psychiatric Association has a unique opportunity for residents to present a workshop during the annual conference. These are usually 1.5 hours long and often (but not limited to) cater to resident interests. This year there were five resident track workshops available. There were two great talks that I attended which were very applicable to resident training. On Thursday, we enhanced our formulation skills with Analyzing Mad Men! This was great opportunity to develop skills to utilize through your residency. As you went through the course, residents learned a structured way to formulate different patients and discuss the core concepts and theories of development.

The other workshop was on Administrative Psychiatry providing information of leadership through psychiatry using the LEADS Framework. It was faciliated by resident Pramudith Maldeniya, who recruited early, mid, and late career psychiatrists to provide narrative on their leadership developmental opportunities throughout their careers. Dr. Ian Dawe discussed the achievement component of the LEADS framework. He recommended that residents starting out may initially take all opportunities offered, but as you develop to become more selective in accepting roles. He suggested taking a step back and focus on your area of interest; and as a result, residents will develop respect for being consistent.