Twenty-eight First Year Medical Students Are Spending This Week In One Of The Four Hospitals In The Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance
by Bob Montgomery
The corporate lead of medical staff for the Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance says twenty-eight first year medical students are spending this week in one of the four hospitals in the Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance as part of the Discovery Week Program.
Laurie Roberts says Discovery Week is mandatory for first year medical students and celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary last year. She explains Discovery Week is a way to introduce first year students, many of whom are from urban communities, into what medical practice is like in a rural community. “In the last week of the first year, all students will be placed in a regional or rural community in southwestern Ontario. The Alliance takes a total of twenty-eight students and they place sixteen of those students in Stratford and then four in each of the hospitals in Clinton, Seaforth and St. Marys.”
There is a very significant difference between an urban and rural practice and the goal of the program is to introduce the students to communities, hospitals and clinics outside the urban academic centre because the experience of working and living outside of an academic centre really is different. The goal is to immerse them in the culture of the hospital and the community, with the hope that some of them will consider living and working in a small community. Roberts adds, they realize that not every student who spends a week in a rural hospital is going to want to practice in a regional or rural hospital. Those students who don't choose a career in a rural community will have gained an appreciation, when they are in a larger centre and they're receiving a call or a referral from a rural-based physician, of the resources that the doctor in the rural community will, or will not, have access to in order to support their work.
More information about the Discovery Week program can be found at https://www.schulich.uwo.ca/distributededucation//undergraduate/discovery_week/index.html
