Education
ment. I also think that you know, there’s huge disparity in the world and we need to ensure that those born in countries less advantaged than those of us in Canada will still have the same opportunities. Really, depending on where you’re born has a huge impact on what your health outcomes will be, what your whole life experience will be. And I think about, why was I so lucky to be born in Canada? Your volunteer work is heavily based on teaching, and you are also an assistant clinical professor at the Faculty of Medicine. How has teaching impacted your life? I really believe that education is kind of my life’s purpose−it’s to help people to live better lives through education. That means my colleagues, students, patients and everyone else. The students are there and they need to learn. I had people that gave of themselves and their time to teach me and I need to pay back.
UCALGARY MEDICINE |
Another area I feel passionate about is the Faculty Advisor System at the Faculty of Medicine. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to work with our students, be there for them, encourage them–just really be a real mentor in their lives. My first student was assigned to me in 2000 and she still sends me updates–tells me what’s going on in her world and, you know, those are relationships that change from student to mentor, to the ability to mentor them in their careers−and they become colleagues. I think it’s a fabulous program−I really have enjoyed it. What has your proudest moment as a doctor been thus far? There have been a few. Last spring my daughter said she’d decided she wanted to apply for medical school. So that makes me feel pretty proud because you kind of go, ‘wow’. You know, she lived through this with me–because she was three-years-old when I started medical school.
http://medicine.ucalgary.ca/magazine/
There was also an experience I had in Tanzania with the Advances in Labour and Risk Management (ALARM) program. It’s about taking emergency obstetrical skills to low and medium resource countries and I’ve been working with them since 2003. I was there teaching an emergency obstetrics course. At the end of the course one of the things I asked the participants to do was to identify one thing they were going to do differently in their world and to share it with the group. This very tall, Tanzanian man stood up when it was his turn and he said he worked as a medical assistant in the hospital. When women would come in and he knew they were having a miscarriage−because they had taken medication to induce the miscarriage−he said he had, in the past, told the nurses to put them in the corner to wait. He said that when he had time he would go care for them because they brought it on themselves. And he said, after being involved in the course, he realized that that’s wrong and everybody who came to him needed care. So he said from then on, those women would get the care they needed when they came to the hospital. I was dumbfounded because you always kind of wonder, does anybody listen, does anybody hear you−and he had heard it. And all I can hope is that when he went back, the women in his community−I hope they’re experiencing better care today because of the change he saw. So that was powerful. You have to start the conversation. People really want to do what’s right but they’re often held back by their own experiences and cultures and if you’re not willing to put yourself out there then we will never change. What advice would you like to offer to aspiring doctors and/or medical students? I would encourage them to hold on to their humanitarian reasons for wanting to be there for other people. I hear it from the students–they’re in medicine because they really do want to make a difference in other people’s lives. I would encourage them to keep the heart in medicine both for themselves and for their patients. We as physicians, we’re in an incredibly privileged position−people share with us the most intimate things of their lives. We’re here to make that difference for those people who entrust their lives to us. ✦
15