Message from the Department Head

It has been a good two weeks. We have had two good candidates for the head of the division of midwifery visit, Melissa Cheyney last week from Oregon, and Julie Wray from the UK this week. Both gave public presentations, had a whirlwind tour and met many faculty, students and provincial leaders. I am grateful to all of you who gave time for these meetings andhave, and are still, providing useful feedback to the search committee. I will  keep you posted as the recruitment process develops.

Postgraduate had the CARMS interviews last week, over 600 students being interviewed,  and we are very grateful to all who are helping with that process.

This week we sent out the Cancer Benchmarking survey. For those who may have missed the link to the online survey is here and we would like as many of you as possible to complete this.

I try to avoid asking you to do extra but in this case I felt it was important to ask for your help. I was asked by the BC Cancer Agency to have the department assist in the setting up of this project and as the results will help determine primary care cancer service provision in BC.  We are working with two other groups, The BC College of Family Physicians and the Family Practice Oncology Network . To take part in this study please click on the following link . You will also have a chance to win one of three iPads by completing this survey. This survey is conducted in cooperation with the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership (ICBP) that includes partners from other provinces in Canada as well as other countries including the United Kingdom, Denmark, Australia, Sweden and Ireland. This will apply the expertise on international experts on these issues, and also permit an international analysis and cross-jurisdiction comparisons of the results. The lead for this work in the department is a post doctoral fellow; Dr Jin Mou. (jin.mou@familymed.ubc.ca) who will be happy to answer any questions.

DATA: On the subject of data there has been a push to get more data available from trials that are not published. An example is Tamiflu where more than 100 trials have been undertaken and yet many remain unavailable . If it was just one drug that was in the headlines that might be ignored but this is a problem affecting multiple drug trials. It makes no sense that research on the effectiveness for a therapy should ever be withheld from clinicians and yet that is the case. The commitment to register a trial has not had the desired effect and we now need to make sure that all trial data is available. For more information on this and a petition go to All Trials

In the meantime have a great family weekend (for those in BC).

Martin