Community relationships can benefit medical education, even if it is not always clear why or how. There is much opportunity to improve the quality and precision of scholarship in this area.

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ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to determine the impact of a 1-day evidence-based medicine (EBM) workshop on physician attitudes and behaviours around teaching and practicing EBM.DesignA mixed methods study using a before/after cohort.SettingA medical school delivering continuing professional development to 1250 clinical faculty over a large geographic area in Canada.Participants105 physician clinical faculty members.InterventionA 1-day workshop presented at 11 different sites over an 18-month period focusing on EBM skills for teaching and clinical practice.Outcome measures(1) A quantitative survey administered immediately before and after the workshop, and 3–6 months later, to assess the hypothesis that comfort with teaching and practising EBM can be improved.(2) A qualitative survey of the expectations for, and impact of the workshop on, participant behaviours and attitudes using a combination of pre, post and 3 to 6-month follow-up questionnaires, and telephone interviews completed 10–14 months after the workshop.ResultsPhysician comfort with their EBM clinical skills improved on average by 0.93 points on a 5-point Likert scale, and comfort with EBM teaching skills by 0.97 points (p values 0.001). Most of this improvement was sustained 3–6 months later. Three to fourteen months after the workshop, half of responding participants reported that they were using the Population Intervention Comparator Outcome (PICO) methodology of question framing for teaching, clinical practice or both.ConclusionsComfort in teaching and practicing EBM can be improved by a 1-day workshop, with most of this improvement sustained 3–6 months later. PICO question framing can be learnt at a 1-day workshop, and is associated with a self-reported change in clinical and teaching practice 3–14 months later. This represents both level 2 (attitudes) and level 3 (behaviours) change using the Kirkpatrick model of evaluation.

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my love and life partner left our house to drop off his car to be serviced. The radio was playing, the coffee pot was hot, his leather gloves were waiting at the top of the stairs because he would be back in 30 minutes after a pleasant walk through the Halifax, NS, streets. He never came back. A man driving a pick-up truck ran David down in a crosswalk. After 3 days of unconsciousness in the intensive care unit, with family beside him 24 hours each day, he died, peacefully, in my arms.Carried by a tsunami of loss, I am now on a foreign shore where everything is both familiar and completely strange. I understand in a daily, visceral way the universal human experience of profound loss.I know in this turbulent year many of you are experiencing losses, from small to life changing. I have found over the past weeks that the steady flow of cards, kind words, flowers, poems, sharing of experiences, books, thoughtful gifts, telephone calls, messages, and e-mails from family, friends, and strangers are comforting and healing. I offer you my reflections in the hope they might be helpful.I was fortunate to hear Dr Jillian Horton speak on May 1, 2021, at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine in Sudbury for the Northern Constellations Faculty Development workshop. Among the helpful and wise things she said, this stood out to me: "As physicians we may devalue our own suffering (someone else's is always worse). Suffering doesn't have to be the worst for it to matter." Even though we know many people and patients whose struggles are much more difficult than ours, we can practise self compassion to acknowledge and ease our own pain.Many of you know and appreciate David as a mentor, colleague, friend, family medicine leader, and pillar of the CFPC since the 1980s. His life's work was to make health care systems better, largely through advancing and improving family medicine. I have asked myself over the past weeks-how can loss and grief lead to systemic change? The death of a cherished family member can galvanize us into action. Our family began asking questions: was David's death a banal and random event? No, the intersection where he was hit was known to be dangerous. And in all our cities, towns, and rural and remote communities, cars driven by people, kill other people. Many municipal designs, policies, and structures prioritize the