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In today’s message you will find:

Unveiling Our 2024 Award Winners 

We are excited to unveil our Doctors Manitoba annual award winners for this year! These seven changemaking physicians are outstanding, outspoken, and optimistic. 

“When I think about this year’s winners, there is a common thread that connects them, and that is the way they have used their voices to advocate for change in the interests of their patients and the systems they work in,” said Dr. Michael Boroditsky, president of Doctors Manitoba.​“This takes no small measure of courage and the ability to see ahead to how what we accomplish today makes a difference for those who follow.”

But who are they? Three specialists, three family physicians, and a resident doctor are being honoured. 

One has laid the groundwork to turnaround the family physician shortage. Another is an educator and mentor who has been a proponent for free access to contraception and safe, accessible abortion care. 

You will find a dedicated geriatrician who has influenced care and education across Canada, and a family physician dedicated to providing care in northern First Nations and to making our health workforce more reflective of the patients we serve. 

The distinguished career of a dedicated and reliable specialist in anesthesia and critical care is recognized, along with a resident doctor specializing in public health and building bridges between acute and community care.

And the final recipient, receiving the award posthumously, had a five-decade career dedicated to care and advocacy for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

Read the full story to learn about the seven physicians being recognized as Physician of the Year, Resident of the Year, Distinguished Service, Humanitarian, and Medals of Excellence. 

Early Bird Gala Tickets Available

Join us at our Annual Awards Gala on Saturday, May 11, 2024. 

We are opening up tickets early this year for our Annual Awards Gala, with special early bird member pricing. Purchase your tickets before April 8 to get the early bird rate! 

This is our signature event, and we’re making some changes based on your feedback from past years:

  • More time for connecting with friends and colleagues, including an extended cocktail reception. 
  • A new layout for the room with more space for visiting and networking.
  • Exciting changes to our program and amenities on site. 

We are again embracing the cause of our Humanitarian Award winner, and there will be a fundraising component to our Gala. This year, funds raised will support initiatives at Our Own Health Centre focused on addictions treatment and HIV testing for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, and the Rainbow Resource Centre’s transformative capital project, Place of Pride. This initiative will establish a new campus offering a comprehensive range of queer services, including a community hub and housing for 2SLGBTQIA+ older adults. Doctors Manitoba will make a donation to support these causes, and guests at the Awards Gala will have the opportunity to support these causes as well through a fundraising initiative.

Get details about the Gala and purchase your tickets here!

Rural Retention and Medical Districts

We have two updates for physicians in rural communities. 

First, we are happy to share details about the new Rural and Northern Physician Retention Program. This is a new benefit available to physicians committed to continued service in rural and northern communities, and is available in addition to our existing Physician Retention Benefit. 

The new Rural and Northern Physician Retention Program will provide a Retention Payment every three years. We anticipate the payment will be at least $25,000.

You can see complete details on this new Rural and Northern Retention Program page on our website. The first payment is expected in late 2026. 

Second, a notice will be sent to rural physicians in the next few days about changes to the boundaries for our rural medical districts. Following member approval of by-law amendments last year, our rural medical districts are being realigned to follow the regional health boundaries, which will better reflect practice patterns for physicians and allow us to advocate more effectively based on the issues within each district.

Physicians in existing rural districts will receive an email with further details this weekend. 

The new districts will include Northern, Southern, Parkland-Assiniboine, Brandon, and Interlake-Eastern. Winnipeg’s districts will change next year. 

The Medical Districts are important because members choose a colleague to represent them on the Doctors Manitoba Board of Directors. The next call for nominations for rural regions will come on March 6, 2024. 

Contest Closes, Get​tingHealthy​.ca Grows

More than 18,000 Manitobans pledged to take a step towards getting healthy over the last month as part of our amazingly awesome and positively playful fridge-filling, kitchen-stuffing giveaway. Entries closed on February 15.

That’s double the number who joined our first Getting Healthy campaign last June! 

The contest was one aspect of Get​tingHealthy​.ca, the Doctors Manitoba resource site with tips and advice from physicians on the simple steps Manitobans can take towards Getting Healthy.

Lucky winners who signed up to do one thing this winter to get healthy are going to be rewarded with fabulously fantastic prizes including six months of free groceries — that’s $5,000 in gift cards for a grocery store near them, Yeti Rambler® insulated travel tumblers and Roots brand toque and mitten sets. Winners will be announced later this month. 

We’re thrilled with the response and thank everyone for their efforts sharing this campaign! 

We are excited to continue developing Get​tingHealthy​.ca into a permanent public resource, aligned with the feedback and ideas we are receiving from physicians. This is addressing a common concern we hear from both physicians and patients – that they often don’t have enough time to talk about disease prevention and healthy living. In the next few months, we will develop the site to include weekly health tips and a screener tool to offer personalized disease prevention and healthy living tips based on age and sex.

Getting Ready for Family Medicine Plus

We are supporting family physicians with preparing for the launch of Family Medicine Plus, a new remuneration model to support longitudinal family practice. We have set up a separate newsletter, FM+ News, with the first edition emailed out yesterday. If you did not receive the FM+ News you can subscribe here. You can view our new hub here for information and a growing list of billing advice and how-to guides. 

Advocacy at Centre of Med Student EDI Conference

Last weekend, medical students held a conference on equity, diversity and inclusion, sponsored and supported by Doctors Manitoba. Check out this story from UM news about the successful event.

Canadian Medicine on Jeopardy?

Canadian Medicine was the category for Final Jeopardy last week. How much would you have wagered? 

Nova Scotian William Knapp Buckley devised a widely used antitussive, meaning a drug used against this.

If you answered ​“What is coughing?” congratulations! 

Bonus question, what is the medicine’s famous tagline?

It tastes awful. And it works.

ICYMI

Upcoming Events

Whether you’re looking to expand your knowledge, increase your awareness, or build leadership skills, we have many sessions planned! You can always review upcoming events on our events calendar page.

Hippocratic High Notes

Come and join the Hippocratic High Notes a brand new choir for female physicians, active and retired, residents and medical learners! where we embrace our inner rock stars and turn our stethoscopes into microphones. A musical escapade that is a fun, bucket-filling activity also aimed at building bridges and making connections! 

All are welcome! No auditions! No experience needed! Just bring enthusiasm, a desire to sing and to have fun!!

Practice is on Tuesday evenings in Winnipeg with space to accommodate kids if needed! Register ASAP here!

Transplant Manitoba Quiz Night!

Transplant Manitoba – Gift of Life is hosting a fun and entertaining evening of trivia with our friends at Quizmasters this spring and we are inviting you and your organization to join the action.

This fundraising event is an early kick-off to National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week (NOTDAW 2024 runs from April 21 – 27) and proceeds will support our continued efforts to raise organ and tissue donation awareness within the community.

For just $10 a ticket (that’s $60 — $80 a table) this signup​for​life​.ca Quiz Night fundraiser offers participants an interactive event alongside our Transplant Manitoba – Gift of Life teams, fantastic volunteers and partners to compete over the course of eight rounds of questions about current events, general knowledge, music, visual, speed and of course, organ and tissue donation. At the end of the night, the team with the highest score wins. There will be snacks and prizes!

Details:

  • When: Wednesday, April 17, 2024 from 6:30 – 9:30 pm
  • Where: Garden City Community Centre, 725 Kingsbury Ave. Plenty of free parking in the surrounding lots!
  • How: Pull together a team of six-eight, select a team name and a captain, and have them confirm your table and cash payment before March 1 with Roberta Koscielny, 204−787−1897 or rkoscielny2@​hsc.​mb.​ca. Space is limited, so don’t delay!

It is going to be a fun night and this relaxed evening offers you the opportunity to meet some of our staff and learn more about Leave Well, the latest national awareness campaign launched in partnership with Canadian Blood Services and meet the Orgamites, a CBS resource developed for early learning. Hope to see you there!

Tired but Wired: Tools for Insomnia Relief — February 29, 2024 Time: 7:00 — 8:30 pm

Join us for a virtual interactive workshop focused on practical strategies to help support healthy sleep for Doctors Manitoba members in every career stage. Register here.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Review principles and core components of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT‑I)
  2. Understand factors that might predispose medical learners and physicians to insomnia
  3. Identify available resources related to CBT‑I
  4. Explore additional strategies to support healthy sleep


DRMB Book Club ‑March 7, 2024 — 7 — 8pm

A memoir about intergenerational trauma, healing, and connection. Facing up to a story nearly erased by the designs of history, father and son journey together back to the trapline at Black Water and through the past to create a new future. Join us for our fourth virtual book meeting on Thursday, March 7, 2024, from 7:00pm – 8:30pm as we read the Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of the year,​“Blackwater” by David A Robertson. We are thrilled to announce that the author will be joining our virtual book club for a Q+A. There will also be a chance for the group to discuss the book and share thoughts. Register Here!

The Doctors Manitoba Physician Health and Wellness committee is committed to providing opportunities for building connection and community in medicine.

Rehabilitation Centre for Children Open House

The Specialized Services for Children and Youth (SSCY) Rehabilitation Centre for Children is hosting an open house for primary care providers and pediatricians on Wednesday, March 13 from noon to 5:30 p.m.

Attend for tours and information about clinics at the centre, located at 1155 Notre Dame Ave. Refreshments provided. For more information, contact Pam Becker at 204−797−2660 or email pamb@​rccinc.​ca.

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