Day in the Life of Tom Stevenson
30 April 2020
Dr. Stevenson, set loose on his Fortress of Solitude
My Role
This year is my 40th with the School of Dentistry. The first 28 years, I spent as a part-time instructor in oral and maxillofacial surgery, and the last 12 years as Discipline Lead, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. I finished my residency in oral and maxillofacial surgery in 1979 and returned to Edmonton. Early on, I wanted to return to the school and teach what I had learned so that I could make a difference for the students.
My favourite thing about working at the school
I love my job, and one of my best decisions was to come back to it full time. I have many favourite things about my job, but the most favourite are my students and the staff. My job is to teach my students, but I am always amazed at how much I learn from them.
One thing others may not know about me
I completed, with honours, all nine grades in piano, theory, harmony and history with the Toronto Royal Conservatory of Music by age 14, and, while I play, after a fashion, a number of musical instruments, my favourite is still the bagpipes.
Something I started doing since isolating that I would like to continue after we return to normal
I do like being in the clinics and classrooms and talking to students, staff and colleagues, but the one thing that I have come to enjoy is the extra time at home. There are fewer interruptions, and my day is oftentimes more productive. In addition, my profession has always been a demand on my time and meant a lot of time away from home and family. As such, I appreciate being able to spend more time with my wife, Pat.
Favourite piece of media
I have a great interest in early history, geology and wildlife and habitat conservation. However, my most favourite piece of media is the movie, Dr. Zhivago. It was my first date with Pat, and the theme song from the movie always reminds me of that time. We are celebrating our 50th next June.
Stress relief
I am most worried about the global devastation that the pandemic has brought and, in specific, the challenges that my students, our staff and our program now face. I have been busy revamping my courses for online presentation, and this in itself has taken away from these worries. However, I have several great stress relievers. I run, on average, 20 Km each week. I started baking bread again (really, really wicked rye and half-and-half loaves), and I have been planning new projects for the FOS (Fortress of Solitude). For those of you who may not know, the FOS is a wildlife refuge that Pat and I maintain southwest of Edmonton. Here, we engage in wildlife and habitat photography, and I have a small fish farm and raise rainbow trout. Maintenance and planning each year is a great stress reliever.
New activities
Apart from social distancing and having to work from home, not much has changed for me since the pandemic was declared. If anything, I think that I am not rushing as much and taking more time to enjoy things.
Current course work adaptations for online
With our new curriculum, I have been quite busy developing case-based interactive seminars for the first-year students. These are very different from what we have done in the past. We present patient care scenarios to the class and ask them to identify and discuss key aspects of the sequence of patient care and treatment as well as critical aspects of the patient's medical history. We discuss how the patient's medical history might affect dental care or how the proposed dental care might affect the patient's health. These have been informative, formative and, above all, fun. Sometimes the patient scenario goes in a direction that the students didn't anticipate, just like in practice. I have found that the students catch on quickly, and it is not long before they are thinking like practitioners. I am in the process of developing my intersession courses in the same way. Because we are now online for the near future, I am posting all my lectures as Vodcasts. The students can review this material at their leisure and contact me if they have any questions. Following their review, I have scheduled four 2-hour case-based patient integration sessions held on zoom. I have divided the class into four teams with one team for each session. It will be the job of each team to evaluate, diagnose, treatment plan and treat a virtual patient. It is a lot more work teaching this way, but the return on student education is well worth it.
Pets
I had a cat named Sammy. He was forever in my face, and if I was working on the computer or reading something, he would come and sit on my lap (or on the keyboard or on whatever I was reading). He was a good little guy and great to have around. Unfortunately, he went missing, and I haven't had the heart to replace him. However, over the years of being engaged in wildlife photography at our sanctuary, you really get to know the animals. Now we have numerous 'pets'. Clearly, these are not pets in the urban sense, as we don't feed them or intrude on them. However, it is amazing how they come to accept your presence. Here is a picture of Sandy. Sandy had been around for several years, and every spring, she has twins. She will often bring them into our yard. Most recently, we have been filming a beaver dam being built on our wetland.
Closing comments
Over the years, we have had to deal with AIDS, Hepatitis C, SARS and H1N1. Each time, we have had to make changes in how we practice, infection prevention control and patient management. COVID-19 is a serious virus, but, as with all others, it too will pass. No question that things will be different, but we will all move on.