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VoV 103: Progressive Form Validation & Instance Aware Vuex Modules with Matt Brophy —
The Freelancers' Show 122 - Valuing Time & Saying No
The panelists talk about valuing time and saying no.
ERIC: You can always just measure the level of hate mail to see if it's gone down.**[Would you like to join a conversation with the Freelancers' Show panelists and their guests? Wanna support the show? We have a forum that allows you to join the conversation and support the show at the same time. Sign up at freelancersshow.com/forum]**CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 122 of the Freelancers' Show. This week on our panel we have Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Woohoo! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hi. CHUCK: Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hey everyone! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv, and this week we're going to be talking about valuing your time, how to handle people who are coming to you and trying to take advantage of your kindness by getting free advice, that kind of stuff. Let's go ahead and talk about this. ERIC: So we got some free advice for you here. CHUCK: Yeah. CURTIS: No. CHUCK: The pernicious evil that I see when people have this kind of stuff is they send you an email and they say, "Hey, I've got a quick question" – and it is. It's a quick question to ask but not a quick question to answer. CURTIS: Yeah. I keep one call per week open to talk to new freelancers, because other freelancers helped me at different points, and I will book them into that half-hour call to basically ask whatever they want for half an hour, but when that half hour is done, it is done. CHUCK: Mm-hm. CURTIS: I'll say, "Sorry, half hour's done; that's all the time I have. If you want further help, consulting, whatever, then you need to pay me for it." I do very similar things with clients – if they have a question and I can answer in their intro call, which is part of my on-boarding process, then I'll answer it right there, that's fine. But when they come back with "Here's two or three other ones. Can you take a look at my site?" I respond back with, "Here's how much it costs to hire me. This is a minimum of five hours to start going through this and we can start scoping out your project, but that's it. I'm not just giving free advice all the time." REUVEN: I think it's an easy trap to get sucked into for a lot of us. I don't know about you guys, but I got into consulting, in part because I really like helping people. I really like using the skills that I gained to help people who don't have those skills. And so when someone comes and says, "Oh, could you help me out?" My first instinct is to say, "Yes, I'd love to help you." It took me a good few years in the beginning to realize that first of all, this is a losing business strategy – to constantly be just helping people and not charge for it – and secondly, the advice I'm giving people is hopefully and presumably helpful and worth something to them, and if it's worth something to them, then that is worth paying for. The bottom line is, I tell people, "I wish I could help you for free, but I got to pay my mortgage and pay for food and so forth, because this is how I earn a living." CHUCK: I really like to help people too. Yesterday I was actually over at Starbucks; I set up a co-working thing every week and we talked, and a junior developer that I know showed up and he was bidding out a project, and so he asked me a bunch of questions. If I'm out there hanging out, if I'm at a users group or something like that, I don't mind chatting with people. If you have questions, I don't mind answering questions. The problem comes in when I have –. For example, I have about 500 emails I need to get through probably today to get caught up on my email, and I'm probably going to see about having Mandy or somebody else help me with my email load because it just kinda blew up on me, part of that's because I was gone for two extra days this weekend. But anyway, I don't have time to answer those questions, and a lot of times that "quick question," it's a quick question to ask, but I have to sit down, I have to think about the answer, I have to come up with a good response, and it's not a quick question for me. So yeah, a lot of times, I'll give them a cursory answer, which is something along the lines of, "Well, we did a Freelancers Show episode or Ruby Rogues episode about this," and things like that. How do you tell people that without being rude? CURTIS: Well, some people are just going to think it's rude, right? I don't get as many emails as you do, but I just don't respond to ones where it's – I just don't. Especially when it's the "me, me, me, me" like "How can you help me? How can you help me? How can you help me?" and they're not offering me anything whatsoever. I just don't have the time; I've got kids that I would like to hang out with at some point. That's why I only book only one call in a week to help someone else, and that's a half-hour. If we can answer it in half an hour, that's fine; if it's takes another half an hour, then you got to pay me for it. Same with the client stuff – we can start scoping your project if it takes longer than half an hour. Otherwise, then I just can't do it. I don't worry about it; I will be rude. All of my friends know – even friends know that I do give free advice or look at their stuff. They know that my world does not center around them, so if I'd take two weeks to look at it, then they can pay me to take less time, or they can wait two weeks. CHUCK: I found kind of the same thing; I've also let people know, "Hey, look. Here's why I'm busy: I record four podcasts in a week and I have client work, and I just don't have time to formulate a great response for this. Here are the two or three things that come to mind in the two minutes I'm going to spend on this email, and I'm really sorry that I don't have time to give you a better answer" and most people seem to be okay with that. They understand, "Hey, he's doing all this other stuff and I'd get a lot of value out of the podcasts," which is usually why they've emailed me anyway. "I love your podcast and I have a question." People tend to be okay with that for the most part. CURTIS: Another thing that I'm thinking of doing as my email scales up is, again, booking a half hour to answer the emails, and whatever emails I can get through in half an hour – great. The rest are just going to trash, because I simply cannot deal with all of it. CHUCK: Yeah. I do like to give people a response, some kind of response, but –. CURTIS: Why, though? CHUCK: I don't know, I like to feel connected. CURTIS: No offense to our listeners – and I'm probably sounding rude –. CHUCK: No, it's a good question. CURTIS:- but we all have lives that do not revolve around everyone else, right? My life does not revolve around each and every listener and what they might need from me at any exact point. I love to help people and I teach, and some of the best stuff I do is actually – I love teaching my students – when I teach WordPress stuff or anything. I love mentoring and helping, and that's why I'm in a Mastermind group and everything else, but I simply cannot do it for free all the time, unless I want to live in a fridge box with my family, and I really don't, [inaudible] it would be a little more cramped than where I am, even.**CHUCK: Even if it was a nice, two-bedroom fridgebox? CURTIS: Even a two-bedroom fridgebox. Even if we happened to have a washer, like a washing machine box inside, it would be more cramped. CHUCK: Yeah. REUVEN: I'm not always so good about getting back to people via email quickly, especially if it's not urgent for business stuff, but I do feel – and perhaps this is just me – I definitely feel that if someone writes to me, they deserve a response. Maybe a short response, maybe an – I don't know – but I'd feel pretty bad if I'd ever end up not responding to anyone at all. I do feel like I'm sort of obligated – I don't know – maybe just by culture, to respond. ERIC: If you're working with a good client, of course, you're going to respond to them, but if it's someone who you don't know, they know you, they're not on your mailing list, they've never bought a product from you – it's just a completely anonymous person –. There's not much there for you to respond with especially, like Curtis said, if they're talking about them and they want to take information or stuff from you, sometimes I'll just delete those, or archive them, or just ignore them, and other times it's just a template reply if it's the same question that a lot of other people have asked. It also steps up like, I have a list of my best customers, I have a list of people who are on my newsletter, who I've had conversations with – those people, you kinda have more priority. My email recognizes that they've contacted me several times, so I can actually say, "Oh, I know this person. He actually takes my advice, has good responses to it; it's probably going to be good for me to interact with him." Sometimes it even helps me, like if he has a problem that I can write about or do something where you write about it once and then a hundred people can learn from it, sometimes that's actually a net benefit. CURTIS: Yeah, like I saw – Eric emailed me last week and we had two or three emails going back for a couple of days in a row, I would jump any of the emails from those I knew here on the podcast or other guests we've had – I would jump on those quite quickly. When people contact me on Twitter, I reply to almost everyone if I can help at all, because it's a limited form of communication right out of the gate, right? But all the emails I come through, some I just don't have time for, and I make time for my children. Yes, Eric, you should be happy. You're doing a happy dance, right? ERIC:**Right. [Chuckling]CURTIS: Yeah, Eric is right – it really does depend on relationship. REUVEN: Yeah, I had this guy who called me I guess once every six or eight months for the last few, say, two years or so. He called me again today, and in the past he has asked me, "Well, do you think Ruby is a good programming language? What should I work on? I tried this tutorial –" so I point in the direction of Michael Hartl's tutorial. I pointed in the direction of a few other things, and then he called me today after, again, six or eight months that I've not heard from him, and I totally remember who this guy is. I basically came to the conclusion that I just don't have time to start answering lots of questions. And he said, "Here's my problem. Ruby isn't quite working on my system. Can you help me out?" I was very straight, I said, "Yeah, I can help you out, but here's what my rate is to help you." I think he was a little surprised, and he said, "Well, is there anywhere I can get free advice? I've heard that there's a meet-up once a month in Tel Aviv." I said, "Yeah, if it's not that urgent to you, then you can probably go there and people will help you. It's all a matter of how important it is that you get this fixed now and working now. If that's important, then I'll have to fit it in with my schedule and find a way to do it, and for that you have to pay." He might have felt a bit taken aback by this, but when I hung up the phone, I felt really good. I felt like, "You know what? I'm going to give him good advice if and when he wants to get it or take it, but I'm also not going to feel like, 'Oh my God, another morning I spent with someone doing something for free. Now I got to work late at night to make up for that to pay bills.'" CURTIS: Well it's about –. ERIC:[Crosstalk] If someone needs something right now, like it's urgent, and you have the answer or whatever it is, they're going to put more value on it; they're going to be will to pay for it. If you are giving someone specific information like, "Oh, your Mac has a problem with Ruby because you don't have this other thing installed" versus generic information of "Step one, do this. Step two, do this," the more specific the information is, the more people value it, the more they would pay for it. Like in this case, for some people, it's not urgent and it's not really that important. The benefit they're going to get from you helping them on their exact case, it's not worth it for them to pay your actual rate and so it's just the cost-benefit equation.**CURTIS: Yeah, when I do user groups, most often it's – if there's even speaking it's not something that I'm there to get the whole topic on. I'm there to meet people and I have certainly sat an entire user group helping someone with basic problems with WordPress to business stuff, and that is what I'm there for at that point and I don't mind making myself available. We have our upcoming Word Camp and I will – when I'm not speaking, I would sit outside in sessions and help people the whole day. That doesn't bother me at all. Again, sandboxing – I can't do that every day. REUVEN: Right, the context matters a lot. If I'm at a users group – if I'm even at a conference – then someone comes up to me, I think I'm more likely to help them out because I'm there, as opposed to at my desk, working on client work, trying to get through my to-do list for the day or for the week and someone calls me up. They're not going to get the priority. CURTIS: Yeah. The unfortunate part is that too many people assume that my hour only or someone's only thing today is to reply to your email. My friend Pippin, whom we've had on a number of shows ago, I've emailed him for support and I even have his personal cellphone number, like I can just call him and ask my questions, but I know his day is not centered around me. So I'll send him an email and I'll wait the two or three days it takes for the support team to get through it and that's totally fine. If I have a real issue, like I had a triple charge on my credit card once and I emailed him specifically. "Is this how it should be?" and he bumped – he said no and bumped it off to the right person. But other than that, I just let his support process take it and that is fine with me. REUVEN:**I have something [inaudible] which is similar, I guess, to what we're talking about. As I've said many times, as you guys know, I do a lot of training through this company in Israel, John Bryce. They make a lot of money in general, but they discovered that they can make a lot of money off of conferences as well. And so I guess, each year for the last three years, four years, they called me up and said, "So, would you like to speak at such and such a conference?" Now, my general reaction is, "Yes. Yes, I'm happy to speak at conferences" mostly because I know that sometime after speaking at a conference it will lead to work. It might take six months, but it will lead to some work. And so I was a little surprised – and that's usually a 20-minute talk, 30-minute talk, I stick around a little bit, I get a free lunch out of the deal – fine, not so bad. So I was a little surprised when they called me from John Bryce a few years ago and said, "Would you like to speak at a conference?" and I said, "Yes, how long will it be for?" And they said, "Oh, the full day." I said, "Oh, and you're going to pay me for this, right?" They said, "Oh, no. It's such amazing exposure for your consulting business, we don't pay speakers." So I said, "Sorry, I can't do that. I don't do that" and so I was pleasantly surprised when this year, about two months ago, they called me up to speak at a conference and they said that they would pay me and they gave me the option also of having a booth that I could staff from my company. Given that the company is me and a programmer who works from home, the booth was not really a good option. I was happy to see that they were willing to pay me for it, but I'm sort of still shocked that they'd generally assume that people can just take a day off and they'll, of course, make tons of money off of us.**CURTIS: Yeah. Like in Word Camps, you speak for free, but I know that they don't profit any money. The money goes back to the overall foundation to supply other Word Camps that don't make a profit. And so I speak for free there. REUVEN: Yeah, that's a totally different story, right. CURTIS: Yeah, I'd speak for free there and take on my travel but I was asked to speak at another one that they were charging. WordPress conferences are like 25 bucks to go, right? I was asked to speak at another one in Vancouver that was like a thousand-dollar ticket and it was of the no-pay variety and I said, "No. At a thousand dollars a ticket you guys can afford to pay me and afford to pay for a hotel room for me to come out." I'm not getting up at 5am to go out and drive. Whereas, say, a 25-dollar WordPress one – I'll get up at 5am. I'll go drive into the city, I'll speak and I'll hang out all day and then I'll drive home. I can spend a long day, that's fine. CHUCK: We want to help people; we want to take the time out. Sometimes taking the opportunities that people present us are worth it for our business or what-have-you when there is a clear business benefit. For example, somebody has a question about some technology that you have some expertise in and it may lead to work. What's the boundary that you hit before you start saying, "Okay, you've got to start paying for my time." CURTIS: I think, again, it depends on relationship, right? If any of you guys wanted to sit and talk with me about WordPress for an hour on Skype, I'd just do it. I won't even really think about it, right? CHUCK: Uh-huh. CURTIS:**But if a random client wants to sit and talk with me for an hour, I would say no. Yes, Reuven, I would even give you two hours, but I would expect coffee when we meet [laughter].**REUVEN: Come and get it guys. CURTIS: Come and get it – okay, I can go to Israel and get it. But a client – my process is I have an email and there's a whole ton of questions in it and they need to answer most of them as best they can – they can't answer all of them usually. Then we'll go back and forth to tweak some of our answers and find out what we want to do. If, at that point, we think it's a good fit, then we move into a half-hour call. We do that half-hour call and that's it. I book them back to back so it is literally a half-hour call and I have 10 minutes in between them. If they need more on-phone time like that, then I'd really sit down and think, "Is this actually a good client? Is this a $25,000 project if they want another half hour on the phone to just make sure we tweak something, it's great. Otherwise, I'd book them into a scoping session. I'd say, "This is a scoping session with clients." With people that want business advice, then – I'm actually looking at a site called Clarity, and it allows you to charge by the minute for your time. I could say, "You know what? If you have more questions, you can, by all means, book my time here" and so they could pay for 15 or 20 minutes of your time, but then you're actually on the clock as well. REUVEN: Yeah. My strategy over the years has been to give people an initial meeting for free, and the assumption is that that initial meeting will be about an hour long. I used to go to meet with people for that hour, and at a certain point, my wife said, "Why are you doing this? If it's really important that they need for you, and if you're meeting them for free, have them come meet you at our house." And so just yesterday, two days ago, I said that to someone. I mean, I've started doing this more and more and people are generally willing to do it, which frees up an enormous amount of my time. I'm thinking of moving into just limiting it even more, because just finding my time is so limited, and to start saying to everyone in the known universe, "Oh yeah, I'll give you an hour for free" can become a little overwhelming at times. That said, yesterday, I had two hour-long meetings with potential clients for free and I went to them because both of them are likely to happen and both of them seem really lucrative contracts. My decision was, I think it's worth giving them this because it'll be so, so worth it in the long term. ERIC: Yeah, and I've been changing how I'm doing stuff. After the first two emails of introductions, I have five or six questions. I'll basically email them and try to get responses, and that's what I used to qualify people. If they respond to the "what's your budget" question, if I have a $100, I know it's not going to work for me and I'd kind of move on. I'll point them to other resources to do what they need, but I try to get answers to those questions and figure out like, "Okay, there's a good chance that this will be a good fit in regards to we're kind of on the same page" and then I'll do a 30-minute meeting with them. Basically that's their free advice. I want to feel out the relationship, see how we're going to communicate; I want to learn about their project, like if they have technical problems or whatever, but mostly it's to see how well they can talk to me on the phone, how I can talk to them, answer any questions they'll have if they have business questions like how they're going to monetize and all that. I'll answer it, but after that, basically it's either let's go to contract or let's part ways. It's basically because I've been in some meetings where it's gone four or five hours of meetings over a course of a month that wouldn't just go anywhere. CURTIS: Yeah, I don't do that if clients want me to go in and meet with them. Like in Vancouver, that's a 60-mile, 100-kilometer drive for me and depending on traffic can be two hours. I tell them that it's a billed day from the time I leave my doorstep to the time I make it back. That actually usually gets them to say, "Oh really? How about I come out to you in Chilliwack?" because I don't charge for travel time at that point. We pick a spot; there's a room that I can rent really close enough, just go over, walk two blocks over to the room and I don't charge him for walking two blocks. CHUCK: I'm a little curious now. Do you find that doing things like this brings more people to you that have that quick question? CURTIS:**I think this is the first time that I've made it - [inaudible] you mean, or like me?**CHUCK: Just doing things like the podcasts and stuff. CURTIS:**Yeah, I think it does. I've got more questions since I started doing the podcast and put out some other books. This is the first time that I've made it more public that I keep kind of a half hour a week aside for other freelancers. Usually, it's just so many emails [inaudible] questions I'd say, "Hey, why don't we jump on the phone if you want. Book a time. Here's the link" and they can book it themselves in the timeslots that I've allowed for that. Only one per day.**REUVEN: I don't think I've gotten very much email having to do with the podcast or based on the podcast. I probably get – I don't know – an email message every two to three weeks from someone needing some help or advice, but it's also very hazy for me, because some of it has to do with work –. And I'm also involved in my community; I have this email list for people living in my city, so I get a lot of personal email there asking about it. And I've been running my own business in Israel, so I get email from people either wanting to do that, or moving to Israel and wanting to know about it. It's not that much, but it occasionally happens. I think my preference is –. I'm happy that we now have – here's a quick plug – I'm happy that we now have the forum for the podcast, because it means that someone can ask a question, and the answer can benefit a lot of people, which is more efficient for everyone than just providing a one-on-one answer. CURTIS: Yeah, for my students I actually started using Slack, and a few of them have private messaged me or emailed me and I've wrote back, "No, ask the question where everyone can see it" and they ask it. I've actually had a lot of times where my other students have answered it for me by the time I get in, by the time I've had the chance to look at it, or everyone can see the answer and others didn't so like, "I'm so glad you asked that too." ERIC: The other thing with this podcast is we've covered a lot of topics, so I get some emails from some people who listen, but most of the time, they're kind of higher up on the scale of – they put effort in, like they listen to shows and most of the time they're looking for pointers of, "Hey, have you guys talked about invoicing clients?" and not a question of, "Hey, I need to invoice a client; how do I do it?" A lot of times I can just send them a link to a past podcast or some resources I already have, so it's a lot lower commitment on my end, which has actually made it pretty good. When I was doing a lot of open source stuff with Red Vine, the support burn of that was basically overwhelming. I was getting dozens of emails per day from people who needed custom help and weren't willing to pay for it. It actually got to the point where I actually burned out a couple of times and basically said, "I'm not doing support. I'm not doing this anymore" – that's a significant part of why I actually left that ecosystem completely. CURTIS: I keep a bunch of my WordPress plugins of the bigger .org WordPress repositories simply so I don't have to deal with support. I find on GitHub, when people get it, they more often are willing to actually, "I have a solution as well as a problem" right? Or I'm willing to work on a solution with you. REUVEN: I've also found sometimes that it helps – I mean, I started blogging a bit more over the last few months, and so if someone asks me a question that I think would be generalizable or generally interesting to people to answer, I'll even tell them, "Look, here's my quick answer, and I'm going to think about this and write something up in the coming days." I think I've done that once or twice, and it benefits them, and it also benefits me. Once again, it makes the answer public, and it helps boost my reputation, boost my Google score and all that other stuff, so it's sort of good for everyone. CURTIS: I do that all the time too. I know Eric asked me a question recently, and I started writing to him and I was like, "Wait, wait, wait" and I wrote a whole blog post about it, and then sent it off to him too. I sent him the advanced copy first, and then sent him the whole blog post. ERIC: Yeah, one thing I've started – not started, I've done it but I'm kind of changing it is, if you get a lot of questions about one topic, like what your niche is, your specialty or whatever, you can also create a survey form. Send people there like if they ask you a question in email, I say, "Hey, thank you but I don't have time to answer this in detail. Can you fill out this survey?" and then every month or whatever I'll go through it and I'll answer those questions on a public blog post. The nice thing is sometimes, if it's not an urgent kind of thing like I talked about earlier, they can put their question and they know they're going to get an answer, you can answer it at your own pace and you also get the benefit of sharing it with the community. One thing I've noticed, you get a lot of similar classes of questions. They're not identical, but there's like 80% that overlaps, and so if you can do a blog post or something like that that answers that part of it, most people can read that and have their own custom part for the 20%. Like, "Oh well, you told me how to do invoicing; I have to do it a little bit because I'm in a different country," but they get the basics in there. Surveys are really good for that and they have very low maintenance on you, like if you're busy, you don't have to go through and do a lot of work with them. REUVEN: Have you guys found that when you tell people that you charge for your work, that you can't provide that much for free, do you find that they're a bit resentful or upset about it? ERIC: Yeah. REUVEN: I've generally found they're pretty okay with it. CHUCK: Some people are. I think it depends on who it is. I've had some people where I basically explain, "Hey, look. I've got a lot going on and I just don't have time to give you a good answer" or "I don't have time to give you a good answer right now" they feel like I'm blowing them off and they get all upset because they feel like, for some reason, I owe them a proper response. CURTIS: For what reason, though? Because they gave you money? Because they're your friend? Or just because they're some random internet person? CHUCK: Because they're some random internet person and because I think they're accustomed to getting content from me for free anyway in the form of the podcast and they think that I'm famous or rich or something – I don't know. ERIC: Expectations. CURTIS: You are rich. You are rich, aren't you? CHUCK: Yeah, I wish. But at the same time, I think most people are pretty reasonable about it; it's just that occasional person where it's like "I thought you being a whatever-whatever in the community would be more willing to help and open and blah-blah-blah" and I don't respond to these people. CURTIS: I would never respond to that, yeah, if I got that back. There's always going to be people that are like that. There's nothing you can do about it and honestly, I hope they never talk to me again after that, because I don't want to have anything to do with them. I've got way better things to do with my time, like massage my beard, than deal with people like that. CHUCK: Yeah, totally. There have been a few times where I really wanted to just say, "Well, why don't you go count the number of hours I put into putting content out there in the form of video or audio?" but really, there's no arguing with these people. It's not a reasonable thing – they're upset and that's basically the way it is. ERIC: You can just ignore them. I use Sane - it's SaneEmail, SaneInbox, whatever, but they have –. CURTIS: SaneBox? ERIC: Yeah, they have a feature called Sane BlackHole, which –. CHUCK: Yup. ERIC: You put something in there and anything from that sender is immediately deleted. It's like a blacklist, but it doesn't even put it in spam; it's just gone. I've thrown some more of the abusive people in there. A lot of it is, like I said, their expectations aren't set. I've had a person asking for advice and I said, "Sorry, I don't have time to answer this" and they replied back with, "Well, would $20 change your mind?" and I'm like, "No." CHUCK: Yeah. ERIC: I wrote back and said, "No, but 500 would. If you got 500 bucks, I've got half an hour." CHUCK: That's one thing that I've done too. I actually have in TextExpander – I've used TextExpander and I had a response in there that basically said, "Hey, I'm totally willing to help you out, but here are the limitations of how I can help you out, unless we're coaching, and here are my coaching rates." And that seems to work out pretty well. And yeah, I've used the same BlackHole thing again too, and it's pretty handy. CURTIS: Maybe I should do that; I just keep deleting them. CHUCK: Yeah. If you put it in Sane BlackHole – the way that SaneBox works is it actually combs through your inbox and then moves stuff. For about two seconds, it'll show up in your inbox if you're there at just the right time; otherwise, you'll never see it. ERIC: Yeah, and for some of the other ones I've set standard message filters where if it's from this person, put it in this folder, and that's done on the server's site so it doesn't even show up in my inbox. I like going to wherever it gets filed and I'm like, "Oh, look! I guess this person is sending me emails again. Oh well." REUVEN:**I don't think I've ever had anyone repeatedly send me email that was so annoying that I need to put them on an auto-delete list. [Crosstalk]CURTIS: I got one. REUVEN:[Inaudible] invited that upon myself, right?**CURTIS: Yeah, I'm going to automate that today because I have nothing else to do. I'll automate annoying emails through Reuven. I've had one plugin developer who wants me to try their plugin because it's the new best thing that's ever going to be out there, and I'm a fool for not looking at it, and they continued to send me that. After my one, "No, thank you. I just don't have time" I just delete them now. REUVEN: The whole thing has – getting requests for free advice over the years has completely changed my perspective. Not that I never really ever did this, but I feel bad for doctors and lawyers and other people who are constantly getting requests for "Oh, can you just explain this? Can you just do that?" CURTIS: Yeah, I actively avoid talking – I have a good friend of mine who is a doctor and I actively avoid asking him any doctor-related questions. He has treated my daughter once in the emergency room; he actually asks us sometimes like "How is she doing for this? How are the kids doing?" Unless he asks, I say nothing about it because he has other stuff to do. CHUCK: Yeah. I mean, if I'm sitting down and chatting with somebody and I know they have some expertise, a lot of times I'll say, "Hey, do you mind if I ask you a question about whatever?" but I usually try and keep it to five minutes and really just be respectful. And then if I do need their kind of expertise or whatever, then I'll email them and say, "Okay, what kind of arrangement do we need to make in order to do this?" Most of the time, like Curtis was saying before, if we have a relationship already, most of the time they're like, "Let's just talk" and then if it turns into something that really does require a bit of time, then we'll start working things out where I'm paying them for their time. CURTIS: Yeah, I make up to them if they need to be paid for time. I go in assuming I'm paying. My friend is a physiotherapist; after my big ride I had a little problem with my ankle and he said he'd give it for free. He'd look at my ankle for free and I said, "No, I'll pay you" and after our first 20-minute consult he said, "I don't need to see it again. Just stretch it; you'll be fine. You don't need to pay me for 20-minutes of my time." But that was his choice; I would have paid him for whatever time he felt was necessary. REUVEN:**A number of years ago I saw some sort of – it was a satirical, obviously fake questionnaire for people applying for membership to a synagogue. It said, "I would like to sit next to – check here: Doctor, Lawyer, Accountant, Therapist [chuckles] for free advice while services are going on."CHUCK: Oh, that's funny. REUVEN:[Chuckles] Of course the sad thing is, you know it's true. I mean, I don't get it so much in the synagogue, but certainly when we first moved into our apartment building, within a day, our new neighbors were like, "Oh, welcome to the building! It's so nice! We hear you're a computer person – is that really true?" and thankfully I said to them, "Yes, I'd be happy to help you – by the way, I don't know anything about Windows" and that shut that conversation down very quickly, thankfully.CHUCK:[Laughs]CURTIS: Yeah, I've actually had to shut the questions down for some of the pastors at my church who were like, "How does – my email's not working right on my Mac." And I was like, "I don't even use the same email program as you. I have no idea" and so I just had to write an email saying, "Hey, I just don't have time guys. I'm really sorry. I can't do it. If there's an emergency where children will die and you need my help for it, I am there; I will drop what I'm doing for the day. Other than that, there's a computer repair person, just go see him. Go see the guy that works with us or is at our church that does Mac training." CHUCK: Yeah, people's salvation is getting backed up; hurry and fix the email! REUVEN:[Chuckles]**CHUCK: What about family? This is one that gets me all the time. I finally told all of my brothers and sisters, and all of my wife's brothers and sisters, "You get 10 minutes for free, and then I'm done. The only people that I will help for free are basically people who were directly involved in giving life to my wife and I. In other words, my parents, my grandparents, her parents, her grandparents –. CURTIS: Again, it all depends on the expectations though, right? I do some work for my brother's website and he sends it off to me and he's "Hey Curtis, when can you get to this? I would love to see it in the next three weeks" and usually it's something really trivial or quite small for me, I just need to get a half an hour for it, and he expects to pay me as well. So after a month or two, he's like, "I haven't seen an invoice. Do you have an invoice for me?" and I will invoice him for part of the work, because he also writes it up for his business as well. CHUCK:**Yeah, I do a lot of the same kind of thing for my dad, but I've [inaudible] my mom – she expects me to drop everything and come help her, and a lot of times I'm just like, "Look, I can't come until Friday." She gets angry, and then she gets over it, and then I come on Friday. I think there's a little bit of art to saying "no" or saying "not right now" to people you do have a relationship with.**CURTIS: You could just do it like me and live on the other side of the country. It's a 52-hour travel time, so. CHUCK: There you go. It's about 20 minutes to a half hour to get over to my parents'. REUVEN:**I've been giving my parents, especially my father, advice for many, many, many years on computer stuff and he never really takes my advice. When I was in high school, sometimes – and this sort of says what kind of high school I was in – I would sometimes be in the office just answering the phone instead of the receptionist. There was a bunch of students who would do that, and so my parents would know roughly when I would be there so that they could call. My father would say, "I need some help with the computer – it's not doing x, y and z." It was definitely a good thing when he found some local teenager to help him out with computer stuff. Unfortunately, that teenager then recommended, "Oh, you should totally switch to Linux! It is the coolest thing ever!" [Chuckling] Oh…Oh, my God. So that was bad advice, but at least it wasn't mine.**CURTIS: I think it's all an approach to you, right? I help my friends who are not very computer literate at all, and every time they say, "Hey, Curtis. I don't know what's happening to my computer. Can you come over?" We show up; I'll go over; I'll take the whole family, they give us all dinner, and they arrange when they could babysit our kids again so we can go out afterwards as well, and they have usually a very easy problem like they installed browser toolbars or something. Or my grandmother wanted to learn how to use a computer and she's like, "Just teach me one thing, like how do I open and send an email today." I'd teach one thing and she'd show it to me next week then she goes, "Now, how do I open up Skype?" It was one thing, and that was it. And again, over there for dinner every Tuesday night, so I teach her, that's fine. It was not all about "me, me" like, again, "Help me, help me, help me"; it was "how can we also make sure we're helping you at the same time?" CHUCK: Makes sense. Anything else we should go over with this, or should we get to the picks? REUVEN: I think we may go to the picks. CHUCK: Alright. Eric, do you want to start us off with picks? ERIC: Sure. I don't know if I picked this before, but I read it again recently. It's a book called The War of Art – not to be confused with The Art of War. It's by Steven Pressfield and it's basically targeted towards writers, but it's actually good for anyone who does creative stuff. It talks about – there's this thing called The Resistance and how your battles with that basically determines how your creativity works and all that. It's nice because a lot of it kinda helps you get over stumbling blocks, writer's block – that's sort of thing. I reread it recently and it's actually helped out with a couple of things I've been struggling with, trying to get going. It's a pretty short book; it's really good to get little snippets of advice from. CHUCK: Yeah, it's a terrific book. I also like his Do the Work. ERIC: Yeah, Do the Work – it seems like Do the Work was a lot like, not Cliff's Notes, but a very shrunk down version of it. I read that first and so I knew kinda the ideas around War of Art, but I like this one better. It seems to be – kinda it connects a bit better; there's lot more stuff that kind of link to each other. CHUCK: Awesome. Curtis, what are your picks? CURTIS: I'm going to pick a book called Boundaries, which is about your own emotional health and setting boundaries in all facets of your life, whether it's your spouse or your parents, or –. So Chuck, you're doing a good job of saying, "Yes, I'll be there on Friday – that is when I'll be there." It will even help you in this conversation, setting boundaries with your clients or with your children or everything else – it's a good book. CHUCK: Awesome. Reuven, what are your picks? REUVEN:I've got two picks for this week. First of all, I've been looking to doing some ebooks, and I think I mentioned in an earlier podcast - [inaudible] has a system called Quarto. Unfortunately, it seems broken right now and I'm either too lazy or too impatient to actually try it out, so I talked to a friend of mine who also had tried Quarto, and he pointed me to Softcover.io. I've just been looking through it, and it looks like an interesting and potentially very rich tool chain for creating ebooks and selling them. It's from Michael Hartl who did the Rails tutorial book and videos and empire. This is basically what he's using now for doing his books and so forth; I think his plan is to make the tool chain available for free, and it is open source to anyone who wants to use it, but then it'll be really easy to publish. It's sort of like a Heroku of publishing, if you can imagine that, where you just publish it and it goes to his website and it's available for sale and so on and so forth. I've only started dipping my toes into that, but it's been very impressive so far. And as many listeners know, I've gone to China a few times in the last few years – around three times in the last two years, I guess – and I'm going again twice more this year, and so decided that I've probably reached the point where I can't teach myself any more Chinese; I actually need to get a real tutor so that the people at Beijing are not inflicted with my terrible Mandarin, and then I'm not stuck trying to understand what they actually say when they understand my question and answer at rapid speed. So I found this company called eChineseLearning.com; I've had three lessons so far. It's a one-on-one video with Skype, and I've been really, really impressed. They seem to have very good customer service; the prices are good, they let you pause it in the middle if you want. I'm impressed with this business, and so far, I feel like every lesson, I have actually been improving. Maybe millimeters each time, or whatever you measure language progress with, but definitely positive. Anyway, yes, it's Mandarin, Curtis. It's Mandarin Chinese.CURTIS: So when are you doing a whole show on Mandarin for Mandarin listeners? REUVEN: My estimate is if I stick with it at this rate, hopefully like in four or five years. I'll be able to do something like 70 series, talking at least part of the time in it. It's a somewhat complex language, especially the pronunciation, and – I mean, I just want to be able to ask for directions and not have people give me funny looks, or if I ask for directions and they understand me and they answer in rapid fire Chinese, I'll understand what they're saying. It's an incredibly cool language, and it's been very refreshing. I know this is going to sound funny because I just finished a PhD and everything, but it's very refreshing to be not a teacher but be the student in a typical classroom type of setting in something that I really don't know. It's already changed a little bit of how I do the teaching of the programming courses, seeing how hard it is to assimilate some of this information and put it in context. CHUCK: Awesome. Alright, well I've got a couple of picks here – the first one is a book by Jim Gaffigan. It's called Dad is Fat. It's pretty funny. He's a comedian and it's just kind of a whole bunch of funny stuff about being a parent, so if you're a parent, it's pretty funny. I'm also now listening to the last book of The Wheel of Time series – books 6 through about –. ERIC: 500? CHUCK: Through about 10 – are kinda slow, but it's kinda moving all the pieces in place so that things can wrap up, but the last three or four books, things are really starting to happen and move into place. I think that's partially because Robert Jordan, the author, passed away and Brandon Sanderson picked it up, and I think he was trying to fit it all into one book, and it wound up being three books' worth, and so things just kinda have to move along so that he could wrap up the story. It's been really good, so I enjoy those. And finally, Curtis keeps mentioning RedBooth as the system he's using to manage tasks, and so I've been using that. I'm really liking it, and I found a Chrome plugin that adds RedBooth features to your Gmail, which is where I'm at for email, so I'm going to pick that plugin as well. CURTIS: I didn't know about that. I have to check the show notes. CHUCK: So those are my picks. I want to remind everybody that we are doing the book club book To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink, and we're going to be talking to him in the beginning of August, so go pick up the book and read it. Look forward to that, and we'll wrap up the show. We'll catch you all next week! [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at BlueBox.net]**[Bandwidth for this segment is provided by CacheFly, the world's fastest CDN. Deliver your content fast with CacheFly. Visit cachefly.com to learn more]


text:
Category: Opportunities
Multiple avenues to service-learning for UG students
As part of its commitment to promote social responsibility and accountability as core values of its graduates, the Queen's UGME program works to facilitate, encourage, support and acknowledge students' service-learning.
While there are multiple definitions of service-learning, the UGME program has defined service learning as a learning experience that combines community service with preparation and reflection.
The UG Curriculum Committee first made this commitment formally in 2014 and continues to uphold it.
Service-learning is a unique type of volunteer service in its approach, specifically with the structured preparation and reflection requirements. Ideally, preparation involves consultations with community-member stakeholders. Additionally, the UG encourages students to focus on longer-term community engagement such as a term- or year-long commitment to build community relationships.
The UG, under the auspices of the Teaching, Learning, and Integration Committee (TLIC) has developed several avenues to service-learning: group service-learning projects, individual projects and individual activities.
Each SL endeavor must include preparation (including consultations with stakeholders where appropriate), service, and reflection on the service and learning that occurred. The TLIC assigned a minimum range of hours required for service (set at 15-20 hours). The hours threshold was established to ensure sufficiently meaningful engagement while recognizing students' key responsibilities remain their academic studies.
Upon application and review, the TLIC designates student group activities as service-learning options. Sometimes these are activities designed specifically with recognized service-learning in mind. In other cases, existing student interest groups have designed service-learning options that participants can use to extend a volunteer activity into full service-learning. Some examples of our current approved group service learning projects are SWAM (which provides swimming lessons to children with disabilities), Jr. Medics (first aid workshops for elementary and middle-school students), and Altitude (mentoring for university students interested in a career in healthcare).
Students may also bring forward proposals for individual service-learning projects, typically in cooperation with a community-based agency. These are considered on a case-by-case basis applying the same criteria as for established group projects.
Individuals also have the option to pursue what the TLIC has designated as volunteer-based service learning. This option recognizes that not all community agencies' needs fit our predominantly-project-based service-learning model.
Such organizations have a streamlined volunteer service system and any project that could be proposed by our medical students could be redundant to the agency's mandate. The TLIC recognizes that medical students can meet the intended service and learning outcomes from working within these existing, established structures. For agencies that are pre-approved by the UGME, students may complete recognized service learning by following a non-project path.
For this non-project (activity) path, the TLIC has students complete different required preparation (typically research on the cooperating agency and/or the community need that is being met). Examples of approved settings for this type of SL include working at Martha's Table and Pathways to Education's tutoring programs. Students can bring forward suggested agency programs for approval for this path.
For any of these SL avenues, students are expected to initiate contact with the organizations themselves, although from time-to-time, the TLIC may work directly with an agency to set up pilot service-learning projects (such as the previous Loving Spoonful project). When these opportunities are available, students are informed through the AS and Class Presidents' emails.
For more information on recognized service-learning options, feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.com
Exceptional Healer Awards nominations now open
New award this year for allied health professionals
Nominations are now open for the fourth iteration of the Exceptional Healer Awards at Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC). The deadline to submit nominations is Tuesday, December 31, 2019.
The award provides patients, families, staff and health care learners an excellent chance to celebrate health care professionals at KHSC who excel in providing patient- and family-centred care. Launched in 2017 recognizing outstanding physicians, the award was extended in 2019 to include a separate award to recognize nurses at KHSC. For this fourth iteration, a third category has been added for other allied health care professionals.
The award now honours doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals from KHSC's two hostpial sites who are innovative in their approaches to patient care and who demonstrate exceptional bedside manner, which includes being approachable, empathetic, collaborative and respectful.
Patients, families, staff and health care learners can nominate a health care professional as long as he or she has provided care at the KHSC in the last two years.
Here are the nomination details, as posted on the KHSC site:
If a health care professional at Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) has provided you with excellent patient- and family-centred care, now is your chance to nominate that person for an Exceptional Healer Award.
KHSC is encouraging patients to nominate doctors, nurses and allied health professionals (e.g., physiotherapists, occupational therapists, psychologists, social workers, dietitians) across our Hotel Dieu Hospital and Kingston General Hospital sites who are innovative in their approaches to patient care and who demonstrate an exceptional bedside manner, which includes being approachable, empathetic, collaborative and respectful.
Who can nominate?
Patients and family members can nominate a KHSC health care professional who has provided care to them in the last two years. KHSC staff can nominate colleagues on a patient care team.
Who is eligible?
Physician nominees will have a current appointment at KHSC and will have been credentialed at KHSC for at least the past two years. Other health care professional nominees must be KHSC staff members.
What are the criteria?
The nominee creates an excellent patient care experience over and above the norm by exhibiting some or all of the following behaviours:
• Demonstrates compassion as a skillful clinician by displaying personal qualities such as approachability, flexibility and empathy.
• Uses novel or innovative methods in attempting to deliver compassionate care.
• Demonstrates a pattern of listening to and respecting patient and family perspectives and choices.
• Exhibits a value of integrating patients and families into the clinical care model to ensure they are equal, informed participants in their health care.
• Honours the uniqueness of patients and families by incorporating their knowledge, values, beliefs and cultural backgrounds into the planning and delivery of care.
What is required for the
The nominator must complete a brief nomination form that includes yes-no questions and a short explanation of the candidate's special qualifications for the award based on the criteria listed above.
Nomination forms are now available online. The deadline to submit nominations is Tuesday, December 31, 2019.
If you have questions about the award or nomination form, please contact the KHSC Leadership & Talent Development Department at 613-544-6666, ext. 8108.
Further details and nomination forms are available by clicking here.
Exceptional Healer Award Past Winners
Dr. Richard Henry – Anesthesiology & Chronic Pain Clinic
Dr. Tom Gonder – Ophthalmology & Retina Specialist
Dr. Shawna Johnston – Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Dr. Maria Velez, Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Nurse Tracey Froess – Cancer Centre
This post was created with information supplied by Susan Bedell, including a KHSC blog post by Anne Rutherford
Cervical Cancer Awareness Week: Fourth annual Pap Party event will take place October 21-24th
By Hayley Hill (Meds 2021), Zoe Hutchison (Meds 2021), Eva Bruketa (Meds 2022)
A unique partnership between Queen's University Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology program and the South East Regional Cancer program out of the Cancer Centre of Southeastern Ontario (CCSEO) is helping to minimize barriers and ensure adequate access for all individuals with a cervix to receive cancer screening. Known as Pap Party, this collaboration offers free pap smear clinics across Southeastern Ontario for any individual with a cervix who may not have access to a primary care provider.
The most recent Cancer System Quality Index notes that only 63.6% of screen-eligible individuals in the South East region are up to date with their cervical cancer screening. As a result of the Pap Party campaign, in 2018 four clinic dates were held and 92 individuals received a pap smear. The highest number of individuals screened since the initiation of the Pap Party in 2015!
This year, the fourth annual Pap Party event will take place October 21-24th, during Cervical Cancer Awareness week. Any person with a cervix aged 21-70 who has not had a pap smear in the last three years is welcome. To increase accessibility to cervical cancer screening, individuals without primary care physicians, with or without a valid health card are encouraged to attend the Pap Party events.
The clinics are run by a team of medical students, and residents and physicians from the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at HSCH in collaboration with the Federation of Medical Women of Canada (FMWC). The first Pap Party in 2015 took place in Kingston and has since grown to offer clinics in Bancroft, Napanee, and Tyendinaga as well.
The 2019 Pap Party schedule is below:
- Monday October 21 5:30pm – 7:30pm: HPEPH Bancroft
- Tuesday October 22 5:30pm – 7:30pm: Community Well Being Centre, Tyendinaga, Mohawk Territory
- Wednesday October 23 5:30pm – 7:30pm: Kingston Health Sciences Centre, (KGH site) Kingston
- Thursday October 24 5:30pm – 7:30pm: Kingston Community Health Center, Napanee
Anyone interested in attending a Pap Party is encouraged to book an appointment by contacting Rachel at 1.800.567.5722 extension 7809 or email@example.com
To further expand Pap Party and combat declining cervical cancer screening rates, we have also reached out to primary care clinics in the Kingston area encouraging them to host their own pap smear clinics during Cervical Cancer Awareness Week. They will also be encouraged to offer the HPV Vaccine. Clinics that register with the FMWC receive a kit that includes a tip sheet, colour poster, news release template, and patient education brochures. To register your clinic and contribute to reducing cervical cancer rates, please visit https://fmwc.ca/events/pap-campaign/.
The FMWC website also has more information for individuals and will help them find a registered clinic nearby.
Thank you taking the time to learn about the Pap Party initiative. Please feel free to contact us if you would like any additional information and please spread information about the Pap Party event to any individuals you feel may benefit from this initiative in your life! We would be grateful and thrilled!
Be a Mentor, Be Inspired by a Mentor
By Dr. Klodiana Kolomitro
Queen's Faculty of Health Sciences' educators already inspire each other on a daily basis. The Office of Professional Development and Educational Scholarship (OPDES) is excited to launch a formal Faculty Mentorship Network to help nurture this culture of guiding and supporting colleagues.
The Mentorship Network's purpose is to serve as a reciprocal process for sharing experiences and fostering a trusting environment for career guidance and psychosocial support. Engaged participation in the program will advance the educational development of both Mentees and Mentors.
What is the time commitment? 7 to 10 hours per year
Mentors will participate in an in-person pedagogical café in November, where the Director of Education Development will provide an overview of the program as well as share resources on effective mentorship. Also in November, Mentees will participate in their first educational webinar with a focussed topic to help guide their Mentee-Mentor discussions. Following the initial sessions, mentors and mentees are encouraged to schedule meetings on a monthly basis. Each Mentee-Mentor relationship should be driven by the Mentee and will vary based on the specific needs and strengths of the individuals. The program will wrap-up with a celebration dinner in May. We hope you will consider this opportunity to offer scholarly generosity and nurture collegial engagement.
How can you participate? APPLY online before September30:
OPDES will do their best to match all interested applicants, but cannot guarantee that every Mentor and Mentee will be matched in this first cohort.
For more information on the Faculty Mentorship Network: visit https://healthsci.queensu.ca/mentor or contact:
Klodiana Kolomitro, PhD
Director, Education Development
Office of Professional Development & Educational Scholarship
613-533-6000 x. 77899 | email@example.com
Spring UGME retreat May 28
The spring UG Education retreat is coming up on May 28 at the Donald Gordon Conference Centre.
Designed primarily for course directors, unit leads, intrinsic role leads and others in educational leadership roles in our Undergraduate Medical Education program, this annual day-long event provides opportunities for information sharing and faculty development in planning for the next academic year.
The morning agenda includes an update from Associate Dean Anthony Sanfilippo as well as sessions on the progress test and quality assurance, accreditation & program evaluation. There will also be brief updates from the Librarian team at Bracken Library about new resources, and from the course team about the Human Structure & Function curriculum renewal.
The afternoon will begin with our guest speaker, Melissa Forgie, MD, FRCPC, MSc, Vice dean, UGME, University of Ottawa. She will speak on Embracing Diversity in Medical Education
Break out sessions will follow, including a working session for pre-clerkship course directors to build or revise assessment plans for next year and a clerkship course directors' session on continued EPA/CBME implementation.
If you contribute to the Queen's UGME program, please join us for all or part of the day. To register, use this link: https://queensfhs.wufoo.com/forms/ugme-may-28-retreat-registration/
Climate Change: What is our role?
By Sasha Létourneau with Gabe Lam and the Environmental Advocacy in Medicine group
"When the health effects of tobacco became known, the CMA quickly changed its investments. In times of climate change, health organizations around the world are divesting in fossil fuels." – Courtney Howard, Emergency Medicine physician and President of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
We (Canadians) are addicted to fossil fuels. There. I said it. Isn't admitting it supposed to be the first step? Much like a smoker with a 20 pack-year history, humans stand on the brink of irreversible damage to that which sustains us, having to make the choice as to whether to quit or continue down a destructive path.
When I first started medical school, I took a history from a man who had been diagnosed with lung cancer after a 50 pack-year history of smoking. I was quite astonished when he admitted he had been shocked by the diagnosis. How is that possible? I thought, thinking back on all the anti-smoking ads I'd grown up with in school, and the terrifying pictures of black lungs and rotted teeth I'd seen on cigarette packages strewn on the sidewalk. How did he somehow ignore all the signs around him? These are questions I hope my children never have to ask my generation about climate change.
Continuing down the fossil fuel-burning track we are on today is easy in that the ramifications of our actions are not yet apparent in most of our everyday lives. Despite the fact that CO2 levels have risen far beyond where they have ever been in the past 400,000 years,1 we are only just starting to experience the effects of climate change. And much like COPD or lung cancer, the threats of climate change most likely to impact Canadians seem just far enough away that they are still only a hazy blur. Yet, like a smoker who is only just starting to experience the first signs of shortness of breath, we too have reached a tipping point and we need to act as soon as possible.
Studies have shown that among the top most important reasons Canadians begin the extremely difficult process of smoking cessation is their concern for their personal health.2,3 If health care professionals so adamantly advocate for smoking cessation to prevent our patients from its long-term health consequences, should we not, for the same reason, also advocate for cessation of fossil fuel dependency? And how do we convince a society (and, quite frankly ourselves) that this issue needs to be addressed now?
We've seen a number of recent examples that climate change is starting to threaten human health, including climate-related natural disasters like cyclone Idai which claimed hundreds of lives in Mozambique in March 2019. Touching a bit closer to home, the extreme temperatures of the Quebec heat wave in the summer of 2018 took the lives of more than 90 Canadians. And even closer to Kingston, many of us have watched with horror the footage of the recent flooding in the Ottawa River that has displaced hundreds of Canadians from their homes. I, personally, might even decry the number of lectures Queen's Medicine students endure on Lyme disease as a direct result of climate change facilitating the spread of this tick-borne infectious disease.4
But most of us fossil-fuel "addicts" are already convinced that we need to begin to transition away from our weighty reliance on fossil fuels. So now comes the hardest part – beginning the process of actually quitting. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report in 2018 telling us that, in order to ensure global temperatures remain below 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels, we need to significantly curb our fossil fuel use by the year 2030 and achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Why is this 1.5˚C cap so important? While 1.5˚C is still higher than current temperatures, keeping global temperatures at or below this level is humans' best chance of mitigating further catastrophic events, including land loss from rising ocean levels, extreme heat waves, drought, increased ocean acidity and both land and ocean biodiversity loss. These climate events will inevitably threaten human health, food security, water security, job security, economic growth and physical safety from war and climate disasters.5
Unfortunately, (as far as I know) there is no magical solution and no promise that this transition will be immediate or smooth. And, like a smoker trying to quit, it is probably not realistic for us to quit cold turkey – we still are years away from being in any way independent of fossil fuels. We also need to ensure we enact a just transition for our fellow Canadians currently working in the fossil fuels industry. But if we never start the transition, if we never grasp hold of the "greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century" – tackling climate change – we will never know if we could have succeeded.6
If you've reached this point in the article, you may be wondering: what can I, a lowly Queen's student/faculty/alumnus, contribute to the struggle against climate change? What can one single Canadian do? Luckily, the answer is: a lot! In this article, I'll present you with a few ways you can start to engage as a climate advocate.
One avenue that our medical student group, Environmental Advocacy in Medicine, has undertaken is working with the Queen's Backing Action on Climate Change (QBACC) group to ask that Queen's divest from fossil fuel companies. We are joining them to ask that Queen's:
- Freeze fossil fuel investment immediately
- Fully divest the Queen's Endowment and Investment funds by 2025
QBACC needs support from students, faculty and alumni. A mass divestment movement can stigmatize and delegitimize fossil fuel use and the profiting corporations in the court of public opinion, a strategy that has also been crucial in combating smoking culture and destabilizing tobacco companies. The list of organizations calling for divestment is long and growing with new players being added every day, including commitments from the Canadian Medical Association, McGill University, Oxford University, the RockFeller Brothers Fund, the British Medical Association, New York City's pension fund, the country of Ireland and many more. This movement on Queen's campus has been growing since the first formal request for divestment of Queen's funds from fossil fuels was rejected by the Board of Trustees in 2014. A diverse basis of support that includes a broad community of current and future health professionals will be imperative when QBACC approaches the Board of Trustees at their annual meeting in 2020.
If this cause speaks to you, ways you can support it are:
1. Becoming informed about divestment by reading a bit more about their campaign here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17PDgVGUXaLyefEp_IwzD4JZ2OANh0qsh?usp=sharing
2. Signing and/or personalizing a letter to the Board of Trustees stating your support of the divestment campaign at Queen's University (here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wDYfBT5h005XyudA-ac32fSIEU_Y6QUc)
3. Signing QBACC's support forms:
- For faculty: https://www.qbacc.org/divestment-petition
- For alumni: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1onGYQBJAiDpPK0r7TbLqf1V0lj_sAWSCEYS_TkQdeMI/viewform?edit_requested=true
If that's not enough for you or you are still not sure about divestment, here are some other ways you can choose a cause, join an advocacy group and work to have your voice heard:
1. Become informed about climate change by:
- signing up for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment newsletter here, or
- reading CAPE's Climate Change Toolkit for Health Professionals here.
2. Or, better yet, join CAPE's team (if you are a physician) here.
3. Support the Queen's Environmental Advocacy in Medicine effort to increase climate change education in the curriculum by including information on climate change in your teaching material (contact us for more information at: email@example.com)
4. Talk to your fellow students and colleagues about their thoughts on climate change!
We are that patient with the 20-pack-year history leaving the doctor's office, having been told the risks of letting the status quo take its course. We stand at the edge of a frightening precipice in human history, where our actions (or inaction) today will determine the world our children and grandchildren get to live in. But like that patient, we are fortunate. We know the importance of taking action and we have a timeline during which to do so. It is now up to us whether we seize the "greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century."6
1. NASA. (2019, May 3). Graphic: The Relentless Rise Of Carbon Dioxide. Climate Change: Vital Signs Of the Planet. Retrieved from: https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/
2. Wellman, R. J., O'Loughlin, J., O'Loughlin, E. K., Dugas, E. N., Montreuil, A., & Dutczak, H. (2018). Reasons for quitting smoking in young adult cigarette smokers. Addictive Behaviors, 77, 28-33. doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2017.09.010
3. Kasza, K. A., Hyland, A. J., Borland, R., McNeill, A., Fong, G. T., Carpenter, M. J., . . . Cummings, K. M. (2017). Cross-country comparison of smokers' reasons for thinking about quitting over time: Findings from the international tobacco control four country survey (ITC-4C), 2002–2015. Tobacco Control, 26(6), 641-648. doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2016-053299
4. Brownstein, J. S., Holford, T. R., & Fish, D. (2005). Effect of Climate Change on Lyme Disease Risk in North America. EcoHealth, 2(1), 38–46. doi:10.1007/s10393-004-0139-x
6. Watts, N., MA, Adger, W. N., Prof, Agnolucci, P., PhD, Blackstock, J., PhD, Byass, P., Prof, Cai, W., PhD, . . . Stockholm Resilience Centre. (2015). Health and climate change: Policy responses to protect public health.Lancet, the, 386(10006), 1861-1914. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60854-6
1. Link to "Investing in a Sustainable Future" document prepared by QBACC: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17PDgVGUXaLyefEp_IwzD4JZ2OANh0qsh?usp=sharing
2. Link to letter of support faculty/alumni can edit and send to QBACC: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wDYfBT5h005XyudA-ac32fSIEU_Y6QUc
3. QBACC faculty support form: https://www.qbacc.org/divestment-petition
4. QBACC alumni support form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1onGYQBJAiDpPK0r7TbLqf1V0lj_sAWSCEYS_TkQdeMI/viewform?edit_requested=true
5. Sign-up for CAPE newsletter: https://cape.ca/media/blog/
6. Link to Climate Change Toolkit for Health Professionals: https://cape.ca/campaigns/climate-health-policy/climate-change-toolkit-for-health-professionals/
7. Sign-up for CAPE membership: https://cape.ca/become-a-member/
If you are a Queen's UGME student who would like to submit a column for consideration as a guest blog, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com
Medical Variety Night 2019 presents: Circadian Rhapsody!
By Charlotte Coleman, Emily Wilkerson, Stephanie Jiang, and Therese Servito, 2019 MVN Co-Directors
Medical Variety Night is an annual variety charity show hosted by the Queen's University School of Medicine students and faculty.
On April 5th and 6th, 2019, we will be holding the 49th annual Medical Variety night! MVN is a longstanding tradition, with participation from over 200 students as well as faculty members. Acts include musical performances, comedic shorts, and dance productions, such as a 4-act Bollywood dance, an a cappella group, and a touching tribute from the outgoing class of 2019. Drawing an audience of over 500 attendees each year, MVN has consistently been one of the largest events hosted by the Queen's School of Medicine. The event is frequented by the Queen's medical community, students from the university, and many Kingston residents.
This year all proceeds go to the Good Minds Program for the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte. (For more on Good Minds, check out their website: http://www.mbq-tmt.org/administration-and-services/community-wellbeing/good-minds)
The show will run on April 5th and 6th at Duncan McArthur Hall (511 Union St.), with doors opening at 6:30PM and the show starting at 7:00PM both evenings. Tickets are $15/students, $20/general admission online (medicalvarietynight.wordpress.com), or all tickets $20 cash only at the door. This year promises to be more exciting than ever before! For more information, and to meet our performers, check out our website: medicalvarietynight.wordpress.com
You can follow us on twitter @QmedMVN and attend our FB event:
Thank you so much, and we hope to see you at the show!
Promoting wellness with the National Wellness Challenge
By Lori Minassian (MEDS 2021), Aescupalian Society Wellness Officer 2018-2019
As medical students, residents and physicians we are always told to put our patients first. In medical school, we sacrifice sleep and social activities to study to ensure that we will have the tools to properly serve future patients. Once we become residents, we work as hard as possible to be there for patients and this continues on throughout our careers as physicians.
Unfortunately, oftentimes, this means that we forget to take care of ourselves. For this reason, we see high rates of burnout in the medical community. In fact, the Canadian Medical Association National Physician Health Survey conducted in 2017 found that of the 3000 Canadian residents and physicians who responded, 30% reported burnout, 34% experienced symptoms of depression, and 8% had had suicidal ideations within the last 12 months. These issues are discussed at length in a recent position paper by the CFMS responding to medical student suicide.
These statistics highlight just how important it is to promote wellness as early as possible. If we can come up with tools to be well as medical students, we can hopefully use those tools as we progress in our careers as physicians. At Queen's we are lucky enough to have a wellness curriculum, where we can discuss issues affecting the undergraduate classes and learn strategies to cope with wellness issues. We also have a wellness committee that strives to provide opportunities for student wellness through different events.
Wellness within the medical school becomes a priority during our annual Wellness Month, which runs in conjunction with the CFMS National Wellness Challenge. This year, wellness month runs from January 14 – February 10. You can participate as an individual or in teams of 3-5. Each week will focus on a different area of wellness. We kick off the month with Social Wellness week, followed by Physical Wellness, Mental Wellness and Nutritional Wellness. Each week, participants can follow national challenges set by the CFMS and track their points through the scoresheet provided upon registration. To register for the CFMS national wellness challenge, please follow the links below (Team sign up: bit.ly/NWC_team; Individual sign up: bit.ly/NWC_individual).
At the same time, we encourage students, residents and faculty to attend our Queen's specific events. Some of the events we are running this year include a Multicultural Potluck Lunch, Zumba/Crossfit/Spin classes, a Movie Night, Lunch and Learn with a Dietitian and many more! The schedule of events can be found within this post. In addition, all of the information regarding Wellness Month can be found at our Facebook page: 2019 Wellness Challenge – Queens (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2019NWCQueens/). This year, we would love to see participation from as many students, residents and faculty as possible! All events are open to anyone who would like to attend, though some require you to sign up in advance. If you have any questions or concerns regarding wellness month, please e-mail me at firstname.lastname@example.com. Let's come together, promote our wellness and have fun as we do it!
KHSC Nominations open for Exceptional Healer Awards
Nominations for the third iteration of the Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) Exceptional Healer Awards are open with a deadline of December 14.
Launched in 2017, the Exceptional Healer Awards are sponsored by the KHSC Patient & Family Advisory Council and was designed to honour a physician who demonstrates in clinical practices the core concepts of patient- and family-centred care: dignity and respect, information sharing, participation, and collaboration.
Prior honorees include ophthalmologist Dr. Tom Gonder and anesthesiologist Dr. Richard Henry (2017, tie) and urogynecologist Dr. Shawna Johnston (2018).
The award has been expanded this year to include one for physicians and one for nurses.
Physician nominees must, as a faculty member at Queen's, have a current appointment at KHSC and have been credentialed at KHSC for at least the past two years. Nurse nominees must be KHSC staff members.
Patients and family members can nominate a KHSC physician and/or nurse who have provided care to them in the last two years while KHSC staff can nominate a physician and/or a nurse on a patient care team.
The awards committee is looking for nominees who:
- Demonstrate compassion as a skillful clinician by displaying personal qualities such as approachability, flexibility and empathy
- Use novel or innovative methods in attempting to deliver compassionate care
- Demonstrate a pattern of listening to and honouring patient and family perspectives and choices
- Exhibit a value of integrating patients and families into the clinical care model to ensure they are equal, informed participants in their health care
- Honour the uniqueness of patients and families by incorporating their knowledge, values, beliefs and cultural backgrounds into the planning and delivery of care
For the 2018 award, patients, families and staff nominated 21 physicians for the award. Thirty-four nominations were receive, with about 25 percent coming from KHSC staff.
Medical students and nursing students are eligible to submit nominations in the "staff" category.
Further information and links to the nomination forms can be found here: http://www.kgh.on.ca/healer
Actors, musicians & dancers?? QMed is gearing up for the 48th annual Medical Variety Night!
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By Edrea Khong, MVN co-director
It's that time of year again! Medical Variety Night (MVN) is the School of Medicine's annual charity variety show featuring UGME student performers from across all four years of training. This year's theme, So You Think You Can Match, was selected by popular vote amongst the students and is a spin on the popular television show, So You Think You Can Dance. The theme may be particularly apropos yet contentious right now, given the increasing difficulties surrounding the CaRMS match. However, while the show is sure to feature references to this, it certainly is not the focus. The spotlight will remain on the performers, and the show aims to celebrate all that is Queen's Medicine.
Wandering the halls of the School of Medicine during after-class hours, one may be treated to a glimpse of the beautiful madness that is MVN preparation. From large group dance rehearsals for hip-hop, contemporary (new this year!), or Bollywood, to table-reads and short filming sequences for class skits, the students have been working tirelessly to perfect their acts for the show. The acts seem to get bigger and more elaborate each year, and this year's line-up surely will not disappoint!
As always, details about the act set list are being kept tightly under wraps, but showgoers can be assured that there will be a great variety with something for
everyone. In addition, although there will be some "medical culture"-styled humour, the show is designed to be accessible by and entertaining for all. In the past, the show has been very well attended by people outside of the "Medicine Bubble™" to rave reviews.
Outside of the performers, there are many others who have been hard at work on the show, such as the promotions, tech, and backstage crews already doing vital behind-the-scenes work in preparation. In addition, Edrea Khong and Daisy Liu (2020s) have been joined this year by Charlotte Coleman and Emily Wilkerson (2021s) as the MVN 2018 Directors. The four have spent countless hours since mid-September organizing and preparing for the show. With the two-week countdown now underway, they are hard at work ensuring the show runs as smoothly as possible. During the show week, many more students will also lend a hand as bakers, ushers, ticket takers, raffle sellers, and much more. MVN is a project of love, dedication, and talent from all of QMed.
All proceeds from this year's show are going to Kingston Interval House, an organization committed to supporting women, children, and youth experiencing violence and working collaboratively with the community to eliminate all forms of violence and oppression. While great strides have been made worldwide towards establishing greater equality especially in these past few months, there is still much to be done and services like these are so vital. The decision to support Kingston Interval House feels very apt. In addition to ticket sales, MVN depends on the generosity of the Kingston community and Queen's faculty. Raffle prizes featuring local Kingston businesses and a bake sale featuring QMed culinary talent can be found at the shows. Donations are also being accepted on the MVN website, with donations of $50 or greater receiving a tax receipt.
MVN 2018 takes place on April 6th and 7th at Duncan McArthur Hall (511 Union St.), with doors opening at 6:30PM and the show starting at 7:00PM both evenings. Tickets can be purchased for $13 on the MVN website, or for $15 at the door.
Get excited for a fantastic evening of performances celebrating another year of Queen's Medicine! Gather your family and friends and purchase your tickets to MVN 2018 today. Looking forward to seeing you at the show!

subset: commoncrawl


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Atento S.A. issued the following announcement on Oct. 1.
Atento S.A. (NYSE: ATTO), the leading provider of customer relationship management and business process outsourcing services (CRM/BPO) in Latin America, and one of the three top providers worldwide, announced today the appointment of Óscar Velásquez as the new Managing Director of Atento Colombia reporting to Juan Enrique Gamé, Director of Atento's Americas South Region and member of Atento's global Management Committee.
Óscar Velásquez boasts extensive professional experience leading technology and outsourcing services companies in Latin America, most recently as Managing Director for Colombia at Comdata Group (formerly Digitex) and Director of the eBusiness Unit at Carvajal Tecnología y Servicios. Óscar Velásquez will replace Miguel José López as the Managing Director of Atento in Colombia. López, who had held that position since 2016, was appointed as Atento's LatAm Financial Services Sales Director, reporting to Juan Enrique Gamé, Director of Atento's Americas South Region. López will take on this position with the goal of leading the company's sales strategy for the banking and financial services sector, a key vertical for its growth in the region.
Juan Enrique Gamé, Director of Atento's Americas South Region, stated, "We are very happy to add Óscar Velásquez to the Atento team to lead our operations in Colombia. His extensive knowledge of the industry and successful professional career reinforces our growth strategy in the country and our commitment to offer companies the best and most innovative customer experience in a business environment that is more digital by the day." Gamé added, "Our commitment to growth in the Americas South Region of Atento is also strengthen with the appointment of Miguel José López to lead our regional sales efforts in the strategic sector of banking and financial services."
According to Óscar Velásquez, "It is a great honor for me to be able to contribute to Atento's success in Colombia and leading its exceptional team to continue offering the best customer experience solutions on the market. A commitment to the quality and innovation in services that have made Atento a strategic partner for our clients and the indisputable leader of the CRM/BPO industry in Latin America."
Before joining Atento, Óscar Velásquez was Managing Director for Colombia at Comdata Group (Digitex) since 2016. He previously worked for more than 18 years at Carvajal Tecnología y Servicios, a leading company in Technology and Outsourcing services for the Latin American market, where he held different leadership positions, notably including leading the company's eBusiness Unit for Latin America and being Managing Director of Operations in Mexico and Peru.
Óscar Velásquez holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Colombia, with a specialization in Telecommunications, a diploma in International Business Management from ICESI University in Colombia, and an MBA from the Graduate School of Universidad del Pacífico in Lima.
Original source can be found here.


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The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization - Updated Edition (Paperback)Michael C. Corballis (author,foreword)
Paperback 312 Pages / Published: 02/05/2014
- We can order this
The Recursive Mind challenges the commonly held notion that language is what makes us uniquely human. In this compelling book, Michael Corballis argues that what distinguishes us in the animal kingdom is our capacity for recursion: the ability to embed our thoughts within other thoughts. "I think, therefore I am," is an example of recursive thought, because the thinker has inserted himself into his thought. Recursion enables us to conceive of our own minds and the minds of others. It also gives us the power of mental "time travel"--the ability to insert past experiences, or imagined future ones, into present consciousness. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, animal behavior, anthropology, and archaeology, Corballis demonstrates how these recursive structures led to the emergence of language and speech, which ultimately enabled us to share our thoughts, plan with others, and reshape our environment to better reflect our creative imaginations. He shows how the recursive mind was critical to survival in the harsh conditions of the Pleistocene epoch, and how it evolved to foster social cohesion. He traces how language itself adapted to recursive thinking, first through manual gestures, then later, with the emergence of Homo sapiens, vocally. Toolmaking and manufacture arose, and the application of recursive principles to these activities in turn led to the complexities of human civilization, the extinction of fellow large-brained hominins like the Neandertals, and our species' supremacy over the physical world.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Number of pages: 312
Weight: 425 g
Dimensions: 235 x 152 x 20 mm
Edition: Revised edition
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Liza Turchinsky, Editor-in-Chief
April 10, 2018
On April 4, Foothill College student Juan Ramirez Ruiz was arrested on suspicion of forcible rape and oral copulation. Ruiz was reported to be in custody following a press release by the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office on Thursday stating that detectives have concluded an investigation. The Redwood City r...
Food for thought Thursdays: Immigration Policy
Aditi Pandey, Contributor
December 9, 2017
"The whole immigrant population isn't facing the same thing, but they're facing similar things," Teresa Castellanos, of the Santa Clara County Office of Immigrant Relations, described of two-thirds of the population of Santa Clara County. Many students attending college are affected or know som...
Op-Ed: There's Still Work to Do to Make Local Police Immigrant-Friendly
Liza Turchinsky, Editor-in-Chief
June 7, 2017
"I don't want to leave. Where would I go? America is the only home I know." This sentiment, expressed by a friend and fellow Bay Area community college student, is shared by countless people of all cultures, backgrounds, and races with one thing in common -- fear of deportation. With 273,018 ch...


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Events of bureau / Kyrgyzstan
A Perspective from The Region: Experts Met in Nur-Sultan to Discuss the Cooperation of Central Asian Countries with China
The regional office of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) and the analytical platform CABAR.asia, together with the Kazakhstan's China Study Centre, held the "China in Central Asia: A Perspective from the Region" international conference.
Return of Kyrgyz Nationals from Syria and Iraq: A Problem We Cannot Ignore
Experts say about the need to develop multilateral approach to repatriation of the Kyrgyzstanis from Iraq and Syria.
According to Kylym Shamy human rights centre, four Kyrgyzstani women and 11 minor children are incarcerated in a Baghdad prison. According to the head of the organisation, Aziza Abdirasulova, these are the people they know about. Moreover, 46 families whose relatives have departed to war zones in the Middle East have applied to human rights defenders. Besides, 12 people with children whose relatives have not been identified so far are located in Syria.
IWPR Kyrgyzstan is LOOKING for a Communications INTERN
IWPR Kyrgyzstan is currently looking for a highly motivated and organized young individual for the position of the Communications Intern. We are seeking an ambitious and creative person who is willing to join the team of young professionals and contribute to the development of our organization. (more…)
IWPR holds training in interactive teaching methods for officers of government agencies
After the training, officers of ministries and agencies will be holding effective lectures and presentations on legal culture for high school and university students. (more…)
IWPR teaches government employees at Osh and Jalal-Abad to carry out lectures on legal culture
After the training, government employees will carry out outreach activities to improve legal culture of young people and citizens of the two cities. (more…)
Promoting Investigative Journalism in Central Asia
IWPR has awarded the inaugural prizes in a new competition that aims to promote the culture of investigative reporting across Kyrgyz and Tajik local media. Award-winners have published a range of groundbreaking stories. (more…)
Bishkek Discusses Role of Media in Anti-Extremism Policies in Kyrgyzstan
Media plays important role in raising public awareness about religious issues and countering radicalism, yet the coverage should be responsible and objective, as was spoken at the conference. (more…)
IWPR Kyrgyzstan: Investigative Journalists Drive Change
Investigative reports published as part of an IWPR training programme in Kyrgyzstan are leading to real changes on the ground. (more…)
IWPR Kyrgyzstan: Lecture on "Active Citizenship. Civil Rights"
A lecture on "Active Citizenship. Civil Rights" was organised in Bishkek for the members of the Leader Youth Club at the BHU with participation of 40 students. (more…)