Some doctors golf, others jump off cliffs with parachutes strapped to their backs. Meanwhile, Dr. Shelly Dev films instructional videos for The New England Journal of Medicine as her creative outlet.
With creativity as part of her identity, the 36-year-old mother of two from Toronto found ways to express that through film, even shooting videos of comical skits with friends as a diversion.
If you had any type of talent or any type of skill, you would have somebody there to support you through it
"When I got into medical school, I didn't know what I was doing and I felt very misplaced," says Dev, who started working in the critical care department at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in 2006. "I felt that I was more of a creative person than medicine allowed me to be."
Originally apprehensive about private school as well, Dev quickly welcomed the strong sense of community at Havergal College. "I just felt embraced right away by these girls and the teachers," says the former valedictorian of the prestigious all-girls independent school in Toronto. Without many social pressures to worry about, students were able to focus their energies on their studies and future aspirations.
Dev attributes much of her self-confidence and initiative to the private school experience and the teachers who encouraged her to be adventurous and try different things. "If you had any type of talent or any type of skill, you would have somebody there to support you through it," she says.
Since her days at private school, she has been pulled between her love of art and her proficiency in science. It wasn't until her mentor suggested she use her filmmaking expertise to help teach medical trainees that she was able to stitch her two halves together. "I started to realize that there were a lot of things we were teaching trainees to do as procedures where they needed to have more media or more three-dimensional instruction," she says. "The fact that I can have this other side of me exist in medicine is so gratifying."
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