Shahzeb Khan had never been in Cambridge, Ontario, before.
But after a week of touring private gardens, visiting several places of entertainment and shading doctors and family specialists, the medical student at the University of Ottawa is considering moving to the community after graduating.
“I definitely have a much better impression of this city than before,” he said, stopped a conference room with glass walls in the gray corridors and beige of the Langs Community Heath Center, almost 500 km from where he currently lives and studies.
Khan is only one in a group of medical students brought to the city as part of the week of rural medical placement of Ontario (ROMP).
The one -week program aims to bring medical students to smaller ontarium communities for the shadow of local doctors, explore the area and ideally, imagine themselves that move there as more and more rural communities have difficulties in finding family doctors.
The Medical Association of Ontario says on its website that people living in rural and north communities have a gap in access to medical care services and is more pronounced for family medicine, psychiatry, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, anesthesiology and internal medicine.
Cambridge, like many other communities in the province, is seeing a growing necessity, says Donna Gravelle, a medical recruiter with the Doctors 4 Cambridge group.
“It is probably not as great as other communities in Ontario … but we are short, according to the ministry, from 10 to 12 family doctors,” Grangelle told CBC News.
Gravelle has helped organize the Week of Romas in Cambridge for more than 15 years and said it has shown that it is an effective recruitment program.
“We want them to think about Cambridge when they finally graduate,” he said. “And it worked.”
But as new doctors recruit, Cambridge doctors already established are withdrawn every year, Grangelle said.
“I have four retirements this year that I am trying to fill at this time. So, instead of growing, obtaining additional documents, we are filling the gaps at this time,” said Grangelle.
“I’ve been in this work for many years and I have never seen this as bad as now.”
Sharing doctors
CBC KW was allowed to go for a day to see how it looks when Cambridge recruits doctors.
The students began the day at the Langs Community Health Center, where they spent the morning following primary care doctors or family doctors.
“I saw many interesting and diverse patients,” Khan said.
“[Langs] It is a community health center. So, of course, each patient has much more complex needs, so we spend much longer with them. “
Khan said that, originally, his career plans did not involve family medicine, but his experience in Cambridge makes him reconsider.
“While here right now, I am definitely giving me a growing impression on family medicine,” he said. “I want to maintain an open mind.”
Sale of Cambridge
After lunch, the students visited Langdon Hall, one of the most prestigious hotels and restaurants in Cambridge. Students were offered non -alcoholic peach and a tour of the land, including the Historical Maps and Expansive Culinary Gardens.
The idea was to show students that life in a smaller community can go beyond the halls of the hospital. Cambridge can also offer luxury, leisure and nature.
While Cambridge itself may not adapt to the common understanding of a “rural” area, surrounding areas such as North Dumfries offer a quieter lifestyle and a different type of medical practice.
It is a marked contrast to what is accustomed to the medical student at Toronto University, Matt Hamilton.
“As a student at the University of Toronto, we are mainly exposed to the health centers of the center,” Hamilton said, looking at the trees and hedges outside the entrance to Langdon Hall gardens.
“Therefore, being able to reach a rural center allows us to exposure to a different patient population that we could not see otherwise.”
Hamilton attends school with a family medicine scholarship and said that is where he wants his career to go. He said he likes how family medicine offers, “a different type of relationship you have with a patient instead of many other specialties.”
Being able to see “everything and anything, at all ages” is what attracts you the most.
Game time for a purpose
The strong winds meant that a canoe trip planned by the Grand River had to be discarded, so the final stop of the day was activated, a game installation illuminated by neon built more for adults than for children.
While their laser and their futuristic sounds are definitely fun, it still intends to recruit doctors.
After spending so much time requesting medical schools and convincing schools that they were worthy of attending, some students said it is a good change of rhythm when they are cut.
“It feels special, of course,” said the student of Med of the University of Ottawa Ram Ahuja. “You feel sought by the community and, at the same time, we are very grateful for this opportunity and that people want us to enter their communities.”
For Hamilton, it is also a new feeling.
“It’s strange. It’s a unique experience for me,” he said. “I have never had something like this, but it is quite interesting and I understand the reasoning behind this and I would like to congratulate the city for doing so.”
The students ended the day with a pizza dinner and prepared for the next morning, where they were prepared for shadow specialists at the Cambridge Memorial Hospital.
But is it working?
The majority of the students who participated in the Romp Week in Cambridge had just completed their first year of Medicine School, so it is a bit early for firm commitments.
Even so, they were optimistic about what Cambridge offers: proximity to the Metropolitan Area of Toronto, a mixture of rural and urban life and qualified mentors.
“I definitely want to maintain an open mind,” Khan said.
Mehar Johal, another student from the University of Ottawa, said the experience was revealing.
“I feel that, for what has been the environment, assuming that role from a first -person perspective, it really stood out and made me consider it more,” said Johal. “I am considering it long after this week.”
For now, Cambridge is playing the long game. But with the Bellinis, the tutoring and some well -located laser lights, it could work.
