This week is Discovery Week for students of the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.
It's the 25th year of Discovery Week, and it gives students who might not have had any exposure to life in a rural community an opportunity to see what healthcare is like in one, and hopefully consider practising in a rural community. Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance Medical Program Director, Doctor Shanil Narayan, says it's unlikely that anyone who has always lived in an urban centre and never been exposed to a rural community would consider moving to one.
“Anecdotally we've seen that many of the practising physicians in Huron and Perth have come through programs like this which are designed to give undergraduate medical students and post graduate residents exposure here," Narayan stated.
Doctor Narayan also says the students get a chance to see relationships develop in a rural setting, where colleagues are their friends in the community as much as they are professional relationships, and he believes that can influence their decisions about working in a rural community.
“We've got twenty-eight students in Huron and Perth right now. They are placed in our regional hospitals from Clinton, Goderich, Exeter, Wingham, Listowel and Stratford. So we have distributed those out so they could experience the breadth of medicine in our region," added Narayan.
Dr. Narayan also suggests there are some myths about the difference between medicine in an urban centre and in a rural community. He points out that because they doesn't have x-rays at their beck and call, they might have things like bedside ultrasound that are used more frequently to help with a diagnosis. He says they also use services like tele-medicine or tele-consult or they use virtual technology. So they do have support in rural communities, just in a different way than in larger urban centres.
Anyone looking for more information about the Discovery Week program can go to the Schulich Medicine web site.