There for the duration: New UBC program immerses family medicine residents in rural communities

University of British Columbia is adding a new rural family medicine training program to its mix. While the university already has a number of training spots in rural areas, it’s now offering a rural immersion program to four new medical graduates.UBC already has the Northern Medical Program, delivered in partnership with the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George. In this program, students are based in a tertiary hospital and do rotations in different communities.In the new rural immersion program, residents are trained by rural family physicians in an environment similar to where they will practice. Instead of a rotation-based residency program, there’ll be a checklist of competencies and training opportunities to complete that align with the program at other residency sites. Residents will be based in the same community for the duration of their family medicine residency, unless there are deficits in their training and a rotation in a larger centre is needed. The program is for residents who see themselves practicing in a rural community and are good at self-directed learning.“The new rural immersion program takes it a step further by fully immersing residents in a single rural community for the entire two-year program,” said Dr. James Card, site director for the Prince George, Northern rural and rural immersion family practice programs in a press release from the university. “This is important because we know that where resident doctors train, they are more likely to put down roots and stay on to practice in these same communities.”Read: The value of FPs doing researchTwo resident physicians are currently piloting the rural immersion program. One is Dr. Jenn Vandenberg, a graduate of UBC’s Northern Medical Program who is completing her final year of rural family medicine residency in Smithers, B.C. Dr. Vandenberg and her husband and children live in Smithers and own a dairy farm there."I always intended to come back to practice in Smithers,” Dr. Vandenberg said. “We live here and our families live here, so it made perfect sense for me to train here."As a medical resident in a small community, Dr. Vandenberg is developing close relationships with the specialists who visit the community. “A big part of rural medicine is team-based care,” she said. “Everyone knows me, and they’re invested in my training, so they’re happy to call me whenever there is a case that is important to my learning.” Residents in the rural immersion program will have mandatory academic activities, an annual scholarship day, a quality improvement project to complete and a study project to carry out. Residents can also do a one month elective in another province or country. The first cohort of rural immersion program family medicine residents will start on July 1 in communities such as Mackenzie, Quesnel, Burns Lake, Vanderhof, Valemount, McBride and Chetwynd. The rural immersion program will have an impact on the communities where residents are training, said Dr. Bron Finkelstein, a UBC clinical faculty member in Chetwynd. The presence of a medical resident will enhance patient care and inspire more physicians to stay in the community. It will also benefit the clinical instructors in the area.“Medicine is a lifelong career in learning so it’s important to pass our knowledge on to our future colleagues,” he said in the press release. “Teaching also makes you a better health care provider because residents bring a ton of expertise and it helps keep you up-to-date on best practices.”Read: Program helping northern Ontario ERs stay open set to expire

There for the duration: New UBC program immerses family medicine residents in rural communities

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