Guest ploughboy Posted June 21, 2003 Report Share Posted June 21, 2003 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Here is some coverage of Western's Rural Week from a couple of small-town papers. I transcribed the articles, so any typos are my fault. Note that the Chesley Enterprise piece isn't in Mary's inimitable style, I suspect she ran a Western press release pretty much verbatim. If memory serves, the Western students' visit was the lead story on the front page of the paper in years past. They were stuck on page two this year. Questions for any UWO meds students: I realize the plural of "anecdote" isn't "data", but what are your feelings about Rural Week? Good, bad, indifferent? After Rural Week did you feel a burning desire to practice medicine in beautiful Wiarton Ontario? Enjoy... pb "Medical students get a taste of rural medicine" Derek Turner Saugeen City News Reporter June 13, 2003 Four first-year medical students from the University of Western Ontario were in Hanover last week to learn first-hand what it's like to be a doctor in a small town or a regional health centre. Christine Palmay, Ruth Wilson, Ian Chan and Vinai Bhagirath all said they enjoyed their time at the Hanover and District Hospital. "It's nice to have this chance because I've never been in a rural hospital," said Bhagirath. All students were grateful to be getting hands-on experience as SARS has kept them out of hospitals in big centres. The versatility of a small-town doctor appealed to all of the students as did the relationships they can develop with their patients. "I think it helps to know the context of peoples lives when you treat them," said Palmay. "There is not the same rapport in a bigger centre." In total, 134 students were in rural and community hospitals and medical centres in 34 southwestern Ontario communities from June 2 to 6. "Rural-region training week takes aim at doctor shortage" The Chesley Enterprise, Wednesday, June 4, 2003 First-year medical students at The University of Western Ontario are about to learn first-hand what it's like to be a doctor in a small town or a regional health centre. In total, 134 students will fan out to rural and community hospitals and medical centres in 34 Southwestern Ontario communities, including Chesley, Durham and Hanover, from June 2 to 6, during the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry's annual Rural Regional Medicine Discovery Week. The program is designed to encourage new doctors to practice in rural and regional areas upon completion of their training - areas which, in Southwestern Ontario, are known to be underserviced by approximately 350 physicians. "This program is vital to helping students graduate with the knowledge, skills and interest to pick rural or regional practice as a career choice," says Dr. Jim Rourke, Director of Western's Southwestern Ontario Rural Regional Medicine Unit, and Assistant Dean/Rural-Regional, of the Southwestern Ontario Medical Education Network. "Having operated this program for six years now, we've seen the impact it can have on students," says Dr. Rourke. "Individuals are getting that first taste of practice in a smaller centre in first year, and that's influencing the directions they consider as they complete medical school and enter residency programs." For the first time as part of this progam, 22 students will also be training in Windsor for the week. It is hoped that some of these students will be interested in completing their third year of medical school there, as part of Western's Southwestern Ontario Medical Education Network (SWOMEN). "Rural Regional Discovery Week is a great opportunity to showcase the excellent medical facilities and exceptional training Windsor has to offer," says Dr. Raphael Cheung, Assistant Dean, SWOMEN/Windsor. "Ultimately, we know this program can help Windsor attract new, young physicians to settle in our community and care for us and our families." The range of experiences during the week varies from centres as large as Windsor, with two large hospitals, to eight-bed hospitals like the one in Wiarton. But regardless of the size of community, students will benefit from the opportunity to observe such things as rural and regional emergency departments, childbirth, family doctors' offices, house calls, how local specialists operate, and how doctors participate in community service. Western is the only medical school in Ontario to make rural and regional training a mandatory part of its curriculum. Other experiences offered throughout undergraduate and postgraduate medical training at Western include rural summer studentships, regional rotations during clerkship, rural and regional electives and specialized residency programs. The Rural Regional Medicine Discovery Week is coordinated by the University's Southwestern Ontario Rural Regional Medicine Unit (SWORRM), based in Goderich and involves the participation and support of hundreds of physicians, health care providers and administrative coordinators across the region. Photo Caption The Chesley Enterprise, Wednesday, June 11, 2003 Caption: Three first-year medical students from the University of Western Ontario spent last week in Chesley learning first-hand what it's like to be a doctor in a small town. The students (left to right) Natalie Foong of London, Victor Ng of Toronto and Jeff So of Mississauga are shown here during a lesson on how to suture as Dr. Marg Sanborn of the Chesley medical staff looks on. (Mary Golem photo). -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE+89Ly/HNgbK3bC2wRAm/RAJ9M/qRf2IsuIBXNbsnnk2aBy9VkAACgh67W n2QM8ppjjwhgDml25rVbkuM= =ZkiN -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aneliz Posted June 21, 2003 Report Share Posted June 21, 2003 Experiences during rural week are variable...depending on where you end up going, what your specialty interests are and who you go with from your class... People's impression of the week is also driven by their living accomodations for the week....(a bug infested caboose vs the Windsor casino hotel for example...) Overall, the week is very positive...you get an entire week of clinical time right after your last set of first year exams... The stress of the year is over and there is nothing more sweet than an entire week of dedicated clinical time with NO LECTURES and plenty of opportunity to learn new things and get some hands on experience. I had an interesting week...I was originally sent to Mt Brydges...a small "town" about 10 minutes outside the sprawl that is London....I was in a family medicine teaching clinic operated by UWO....there were both residents and clerks there too... All of the doctors commuted from London, had no attachment to the community, had little relationship with their patients due to the fact that it is a teaching practice and people are seen by a constant parade of new residents/clerks and the community didn't know that we were there - nor did they care - given that they have a UWO teaching practice in town, they will NEVER be short of doctors. Everybody saw the specialists in London, had surgery in London, had their babies in London, etc....so not so rural! And, given that it was so close to London, we also commuted from our own apartments to the clinic every day....so we really didn't experience that 'small town rural' environment that we were supposed to be... So, given that you could see everything that there was to see in Mt Brydges (two or three times even) during the 2 days that we were there, we went to Windsor for the rest of the week. Now, originally, when I heard about this Windsor for clerkship idea, I thought that it was kind of sketchy and that I would fight hard to stay in London.... But, after seeing Windsor's hospitals, I have to say that there would be some definite advantages to being a clerk in Windsor and I am really impressed by their set up...there is more opportunity to get involved instead of just watching because there are no residents in Windsor. Overall, I had an excellent time in Windsor - not so great in Mt Brydges...but the week turned out okay. Most of my classmates had a good clinical experience during the week....we all saw totally different stuff, depending on where you were and what doctor you were with - some did a lot of ER stuff and saw some pretty intense trauma patients (suicide, motorcycle accidents) others saw a whole bunch of births, some saw a lot of surgery, others did a lot of family medicine. Unfortunately it is kind of luck of the draw as to where you end up....so if you had already decided that you want nothing to do with surgery as a career, and you end up with a rural surgeon for the week, your experience wouldn't be as good as the person that wants ER and spends most of the week in the ER. And if you end up partnered up with a person from your class that you don't like so much vs your best friend/significant other, your experience may be more positive/negative because of that too...Overall, we had a great time though...definitely the highlight of first year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest monkey Posted June 21, 2003 Report Share Posted June 21, 2003 Hi i got a chance to go to strathroy which is 20min from london. b/c it was only 20 min, most of the docs DO commute from london. but that didnt affect our experience. even though we were so close to london, the community of strathroy put us up in a motel. which was nice in that we were able to get the community feel. i got an amazing chance to work in the ER and write charts, do diagnosis, physical exams (with the docs supervision of course) and one of the guys in my grp saw a suicide victim in the ER...and it was tough to see that. and the docs were like:take the time to regrp if u need it before u see the next patient. so feelings can be expressed even in the ER if need be. and interestingly, the next day me and another guy form the grp got to see the autopsy of the victim. and the big thing was that the pathologists were sooo respectful of culturall traditions when it came to death and dying. and that touched me. like it was amazing to see that amt of respect in the morgue. there were lots of similar experienes, some happy and some grim. but for me rural week put my first year into perspective. like this is what MEDICINE is all about. and i love it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted June 22, 2003 Report Share Posted June 22, 2003 Actually, most rural communities within about 1-2hr of London will have strong ties to London in terms of referral to specialists, ORs, MRIs, CT scans. At Four Counties in Newbury, we try to deal the basic stuff (ie an uncomplicated MI that responds to TPA) on-site, but any special stuff has to be sent to London or Strathroy, as it would with Mt. Brydges. Yeah, we do have a few ORs, but they're only used for endoscopies/colonoscopies! Even births are sent to Strathroy or London, and in fact some of the patients who live in the surrounding towns and show up in the ER have family docs in London!! Same goes for my Aunt and Uncle who live just outside Grand Bend, on the way to Goderich. Simple stuff they'll send to exeter, Seaforth or Goderich. . . but anything complicated goes to London (unless there's a shorter waiting time in Walkerton, say for a CT). Glencoe's paper dropped the boat on covering Raj and company's trip to FCHS. The hospital admin wasn't too happy about that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest lcloh Posted June 22, 2003 Report Share Posted June 22, 2003 Meanwhile, those of us who went to Owen Sound and Windsor got the king of royal treatment: TV, radio AND print media! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aneliz Posted June 23, 2003 Report Share Posted June 23, 2003 I appreciate that most of the Southwest communities are very attached to London (given that it is the tertiary centre for the entire region) - but Mt Brydges more so than most....Mt Brydges has ONE family medicine clinic - no hospital, no urgent care centre, no diagnostic testing, no ER of any kind, nothin... So anything that isn't simple family med (and booked in advance) goes directly to London without even being seen in Mt Brydges...and the fact that it is so close to London that people do their grocery shopping/go to school in London kind of detracts from the 'small town experience'. Give it 10 years and Mt Brydges will have been swallowed by London entirely... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted June 23, 2003 Report Share Posted June 23, 2003 I hope not. . . because that would mean London would have eaten up Komoka, Komoka park and the aqua-driving range first! I love those places. Truth is, there's no such thing as a specific "rural week" at UWO. Did the people at Sarnia, Windsor, Woodstock, Chatham or Owen's Sound get the "small-town experience"? No, not really. And even within the smaller towns, the experiences would have been very different. In Newbury, we got taken up in a plane and taken canoeing. But we weren't ever wined and dined - we paid almost all our meals except breakfast ourself. In Walkerton, Goderich and Clinton, they would have had an entirely different experience. Just like clinical methods. . . or clerkship. What hospital you are at, or who your preceptor is can make an IMMENSE difference in the experience. I've had a clinical methods placement at the centre in Mount Brydges. It might not be a hospital, but it isn't exactly like a family medicine clinic and it IS rural -> just look at the population it caters to. It's also a great teaching site (hmm, maybe too great. . . that many residents and other students would have been a pain for me too!) Many rural family docs don't work at a Hospital but at a clinic like that one. And as far as rural medical centres/hospitals are concerned, if there's one thing to learn. . . it's that there is great variety. The "Hospital" in Walkerton is big enough to have a CT scanner. The "Hospital" in Exeter is not much more than an emerg department and a few beds. . . I'm not sure it even has a lab. Four Counties Health Services (the 'hospital' I was placed at. . . note they don't even call it a hospital) was a great teaching site, but all it had was about 31 beds, a lab to run the most basic of tests (lytes, CBC, CK-MB, CK, amylase, lipase) an emerg department where they could treat uncomplicated MI's and a few other things, but anything complicated at all would be sent to London, an OR without surgeons (a gastroenterologist comes in every so often to do colonoscopies and endoscopies, and the Emerg people use it for suturing.) All regular physicians there are family docs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aneliz Posted June 23, 2003 Report Share Posted June 23, 2003 Yup...I would agree that Mt Brydges is a great teaching site...but it isn't great for rural week because there are so many residents and clerks around....we were the absolute last priority and it was pretty frustrating...they also seemed to be having a real problem getting patients to show up (lots of no shows and cancellations!!!) which meant that there was even more competition to see patients.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted June 23, 2003 Report Share Posted June 23, 2003 Welcome to second year. . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aneliz Posted June 23, 2003 Report Share Posted June 23, 2003 Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TimmyMax Posted June 27, 2003 Report Share Posted June 27, 2003 Hey, Sorry about the delay, but I just thought that I'd share... I thought that Rural Week was awesome!!! I went to Tillsonburg where there is a decent sized hospital that does pretty much everything except Ob/Gyn (but I did get to examine a couple of pregnant women- one was at 37 weeks!), and I got to see a ton of stuff. I thought that Rural Week was especially amazing seeing as how us 1st years were barred from the London hospitals in the wake of SARS (ie: March), which effectively torpedoed all my big plans of doing all these great 4th quarter electives I had lined up. Rural Week is especially fun because the communities are very happy to have us and are very eager to impress. The docs were very enthusiastic and some were very good teachers and let us loose on a few patients, which was pretty scary the first couple of times- I know that I blanked the first time my doc and I walked into the room with a patient- the doc hopped up on the exam table, sat down and said "your patient!". I had no idea what to do and stared blankly at the patient for what seemed like an eternity, kind of like I do on exams! I managed to get through it without any major problems, but still, the first few times it was a little scary but very exciting! So that's my Rural Week experience. We had a great group (well, except for HH, that is) and the community was fantastic in how they opened their arms to us. I am going back to Tillsonburg a couple times in July to hang out with one of the docs I met there and I am very much looking forward to it! So yes, Rural Week is very cool and it will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of your first year at UWO! Best of luck! Timmy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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