Celebrating PEN@10 years at the Dietitians of Canada conference
Passion. Excellence. Achievement. New frontiers. Stronger together. These words describe the sentiment of the PEN@10 celebrations at the recent Dietitians of Canada Conference, held in Quebec City.
Celebrating PEN@10: An international success story was presented to hundreds of conference delegates by Jayne Thirsk, Judy Bauer and Sue Kellie, from Dietitians of Canada, Dietitians Association of Australia and the British Dietetic Association, respectively. A video was shown in this presentation, where dietitians spoke of how PEN® has impacted their practice. The PEN® mascot, PENny, also made an appearance in this video. You can watch the video here.
After this presentation, delegates rushed to our PEN
® booth to get their own PENny penguin, and began tweeting pictures of PENny around Quebec City. We have created a
PENny album on our Facebook page. Share your pictures of PENny!
Our PEN team connected with conference delegates at our PEN
® booth where we showcased the many features available in PEN, including newer features such as
My PEN® Favourites and
My PEN® Content Alerts. We consulted PEN users on how they would like to see the PEN handout template modified to better suit their needs and how we can better help dietitians in their practice.
Our evidence analyst, Dawna Royall co-presented on telehealth in a session titled Teledietetic: Emerging practice opportunities. Dawna presented a literature review on
telehealth, which was followed by a clinician perspective, as well as regulatory issues to be aware of.
Our PEN resource manager, Jane Bellman, presented a poster on the creation of 25 open access, short, high quality evidence-based videos on healthy living to support families with children. More details on these videos are available
here.
The PEN
® Global Team had its first in-person operations meeting, to celebrate our accomplishments as a global collaboration. We had our IT team present their design for our upcoming PEN
® website redesign. See a sneak peak
here! This meeting resulted in vibrant discussion that will help to shape how PEN® will continue to evolve in the future.
PEN
®’s Director, Jayne Thirsk, introduced the speaker at the final conference plenary. Dr Tim Caulfield presented Finding truth in a sea of myth and misinformation where he shared his passion for challenging the pervasive pseudoscience that puts consumers at risk of serious adverse health consequences. He distinguished between real and junk science and highlighted PEN as a go-to source for evidence-based information.Judging by the energy of the conference, both in person, and the flurry of activity with the conference hashtag #DCconf15, delegates agreed that we are indeed Stronger Together.
Written by Kristyn Hall MSc, RD
PEN® Communications Lead