Letter from the Editors

Dear lovely readers,
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Welcome to our Growth Issue. We are so thrilled that you have decided to pick up a copy of the QMR and give it a read. We are very proud of the content that our entire team (writers, editors, layout, and artists) have brought forward to our first issue of the year (and our first issue as Editors-in-Chief)! 

For this issue, we challenged the Queen’s Medicine community to interpret the theme of Growth in various ways. Given the dynamic spread of talent in the QMed community, it should come as no surprise that the results were wide-ranging. In the Growing Costs of Healthcare in Canada, Victoria Lee-Kim takes a critical eye to the economics of providing care, and asks what we as medical learners should know, and how this financial climate might impact us as practicing physicians. Emma Spence meditates on the process of growth and development in all respects in her touching article, Growing Pains. Meanwhile, Alexandra Morra discusses what it looks like to parlay schemas and guidelines adopted in the classroom into real-life clinical practice in From Classroom to Clinic. As part of our first ever QMRxMedLit collaboration, Andrew Lee reviews The Boy on the Beach a beautifully tragic real-life story about a group of Syrian refugees who tried to grow a new life by seeking asylum overseas (read it if you haven’t yet, and go to the next book club meeting)! On a lighter note, Sarenna Lalani offers up some green smoothie recipes to grow the healthiest body possible. We also added our hands into the mix with an interview-based series that asks medical students at different stages of their journey about their own growth, and a fashion column that shows you how to enhance your standard clinical skills wardrobe pieces. Finally, we are so excited to announce the launch of our new column, Dear QMR, wherein anonymous upper-year students answer questions submitted by members of the QMed community. We are so thankful for the silent contributions from all of you. We hope that this column is both fun, powerful, and emotional all-at-once!

A special acknowledgment goes out to our hard-working managing editors, Grace Yin and Christine Moon, who have been pulling strings behind the scenes for the past couple of months, our content editors, Zoe Hu, Jessica Nguyen, and Sarenna Lalani for making sure we have all crossed our t’s and dotted our i’s (and also for making us all sound better!), and to our phenomenal artistry and layout team: Amanda Mills, Doan-Nghi Dam-Le, Jessica Nguyen and Andrew Lee who have completely revamped the look of the QMR for this issue!

Whatever it is you seek out - there is something for you in this issue. We thank you for taking the time to support our creative endeavor, and to all of those who have contributed in their many ways. It takes a village, and we happen to reside in the best one out there. 

Nicole Krysa & Kimberley Yuen