CFMS Activities
Quebec update Bryce Durafourt (McGill)
Quebec Regional Representative and Executive Vice-President CFMS
I
was thrilled to have been re-elected as Quebec regional representative this year at our 2013 annual general meeting (AGM) in Vancouver and honoured to have been named the executive vice-president of the organization. I have spent the first half of my term continuing a number of projects and picking up new ones as well. One of my key roles as Quebec representative is to act as liaison with the Fédération médicale étudiante du Quebec (FMEQ), and strengthen the relationship between our two organizations. In my capacity as Quebec representative, I regularly attend meetings of the FMEQ. Once again this year, the FMEQ sent a delegation to our AGM 2013, allowing for continued discussions and sharing of ideas, especially on the topic of student wellness. We have continued to collaborate since that meeting, and the CFMS and FMEQ submitted a joint proposal to the Canadian Physician Health Institute to fund a pan-Canadian medical student wellness survey. We were pleased to recently find out that we had been awarded the funding, and planning of the survey is now underway. This project exemplifies the results that can come from collaboration between our organizations. As another example of our collaborative efforts, we were happy to again invite a delegation from the FMEQ to the CFMS Lobby Day on Feb. 3 in Ottawa, which was deemed a success by both our organizations.
April 2014
Among my responsibilities as an executive member, I oversee the CFMS travel funding, offered to support nonelected CFMS members attending a CFMS general meeting. Modifications I have made to the program include streamlining the process for applicants and reviewers by revamping the application form and introducing clear criteria for evaluation, as well as providing earlier decisions to applicants. We continue to receive an increasing number of applications for each meeting, demonstrating a growing interest in the CFMS! I also assisted with the recent review of our organizational bylaws, carried out to comply with the new Canada Notfor-profit Corporations Act. The updated bylaws will be submitted to our membership for approval at our next general meeting. Finally, I continue to act as external representative to the Canadian Association of Internes and Residents (CAIR), attending their meetings and offering opinions on issues relevant to medical students as they arise. One of the largest projects I have been involved with over the past year is one that involves offering our services to all of our members in both official languages. To this end, I created the CFMS Bilingualism Task Force, comprised of bilingual medical student volunteers from across the country, to assist with document translation. As much of our interaction with our membership occurs through our website, the CFMS executive ranked
CFMS Annual Review
“This initiative will allow our information and services to be accessible to more students across the country…” translation of the website as the number one priority in our strategic financial plan last year. Given the large volume of text available, funds were allocated in order to use professional services for the initial website translation. In order to reduce our costs, it was decided that once this initial translation was complete, we would ask our task force members to assist with ongoing translation of new items posted to the website. The most relevant and up-to-date sections of our website were compiled and have now been translated, and should be posted to our new Frenchlanguage section of our website shortly. This initiative will allow the information and services to be accessible to more students across the country and should encourage increased interest in individual membership in the CFMS by students at the three non-CFMS member medical schools in Quebec. n
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