From clinic to Pak tourism to laser tag: How does this Ontario city woo future doctors
Shahzeb Khan had never gone to Cambridge, Onts before.
But after a week of visiting private gardens, various entertainment sites and shading are considering going to the community after being graduated, Ottawa Medical Students, visiting family doctors and experts.
He said, “I definitely have a better impression of this city than before,” said, Langs Community Heath Center’s Gray and Beige Hallway outside a glass wall conference room, from where he currently lives and studies.
The Khan Rural Ontario Medical Placement (ROMP) is just one in a group of medical students brought into the city as part of the week.
The objective of the week -long program is to get medical students in small Ontario communities to shade local physicians, detect the area, and ideally, more and more rural communities struggle to find family doctors as much as they proceed from there.
The Ontario Medical Association has stated on its website that people living in rural and northern communities have a difference in access to health care services and are most clear for family medicine, psychiatry, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, anesthesiology and internal medicine.
Cambridge, like many other communities in the province, is looking after a growing need, Donna Gravel, Group’s doctors 4 Cambridge calls a physician recruitment.
“This is probably not as large as other communities in Ontario … but according to the ministry, according to 10 to 12 family physicians, there are less,” Grevel told CBC News.
Grevel has helped organize the ROMP week in Cambridge for more than 15 years and said that it has proved to be an effective recruitment program.
“We want them to think of Cambridge when they finally graduate,” he said. “And it has worked.”
But when they recruit new doctors, the already established Cambridge doctors are retiring every year, Grevel said.
“This year I have four retirement that I am trying to fill now. So instead of growing, instead of getting additional doors, we are still filling the gaps,” Grevel said.
“I have been in this job for a few years and I have never seen it as bad.”
Cinematography
The CBC KW was allowed to tag for a day to see what it looks like when Cambridge doctors are recruited.
The students started the day at the Langs Community Health Center, where they spent morning cinematography to primary care doctors or family doctors.
“I saw a lot of interesting, diverse patients,” Khan said.
“(Langs) is a community health center. So certainly every patient has very more complex requirements, so we spent a lot of time with them.”
Khan said that, originally, his career plans did not include family medicine, but his experience in Cambridge rethinked him.
“Being here now, it is definitely giving me a growing impression on family medicine,” he said. “I want to have an open mind.”
Sell cambridge
After lunch, the students visited Langdon Hall, one of the most prestigious hotels and restaurants in Cambridge. Students were offered non-contact peaches for Bellinis and ground tour, which included the historic map room and the expander Pak park.
The idea was to show the students that life in a small community could only be beyond the hospital hallway. Cambridge can also offer luxury, holiday and nature.
While Cambridge themselves may not suit the general understanding of a “rural” region, the surrounding areas such as North Dumphries provide a calm lifestyle and a different type of medical practice.
This is a contrast to the University of Toronto Medical Student Matt Hamilton.
“As a student at the University of Toronto, we are mostly exposed to health centers,” Hamilton said, looking at trees and hedges outside the entrance of the Langdon Hall gardens.
“So being able to get more in a rural center, it allows us to come in contact with a separate patient population, which we will not see otherwise.”
Hamilton is attending school on a family medical scholarship and said he wants his career to go. He said that he likes how family medicines provide, “A different kind of relationship you have with a patient, instead of that with other specialties.”
Being able to see “everything and anything, at all ages”, who appeals the most for him.
Platform with a purpose
High winds meant that a planned canoe journey under the Grand River had to be scraped, so the last stop of the day was active, a neon-lit gaming feature was made more for adults than children.
While its laser and futuristic sounds are definitely fun, it is still with the intention of recruiting doctors.
After spending so much time in applying in medical schools and assuring schools, some students said that when they are wooing, it is a good change of speed.
“It seems particularly special,” said Ram Ahuja University, a student of Ottawa Made. “You wanted the community as well as, we feel very grateful to the occasion and people want us to enter our communities.”
For Hamilton, it is also a new feeling.
“This is strange. This is a unique experience for me,” he said. “I had nothing like that, but it is very interesting and I understand the argument behind it and I want to appreciate the city to do it.”
The students finished the day with pizza dinner and prepared for the next morning, where they were ready for shade experts at the Cambridge Memorial Hospital.
But is it working?
Most students participating in Romp Week in Cambridge wrapped only their first year of medical school, so this firm is a little hurry for commitments.
Nevertheless, they were optimistic about what Cambridge offers: proximity to the Greater Toronto region, a mixture of rural and urban life and skilled masters.
“Surely wants to have an open mind,” Khan said.
Meher Johl, another student of Ottawa University, said that the experience was an eye opening.
“I feel like how the environment has been welcomed, taking that role from the first person’s point of view, it really stands for us and it has considered me more,” Johl said. “I am especially considering this after this week.”
For now, Cambridge is playing tall game. But with bellinis, mentorship and some well -laid laser lights, it can just work.
