Before taking tours of places like Nipawin, Brooke Hoffman, a second-year University of Saskatchewan medical student, said she had no interest in rural medicine.
“I had the misconception last year – and previously – that rural med is strictly family medicine,” she said.
Having taken tours hosted by the Saskatchewan Medical Association through its Roadmap Program of the medical facilities in Swift Current, Meadow Lake, La Loche and Estevan, she said she now knows there’s lots of options for rural doctors, that there’s also a need for specialists.
Jessica Watt, Kelsey Trail Health Region’s recruitment and retention co-ordinator, organized the medical students’ visit to Nipawin Aug. 26.
“Our goal is so that they get to experience rural medicine,” she said. “Our hope is if they experience it and they like it and they have a good time here, that when they get later on in their medical training, that they actually choose family medicine and choose to practice rurally.”
There were 47 medical students from the University of Saskatchewan, most of which were in their first and second years of study.
This is the first time the tour has gone through Nipawin, though it has stopped in Melfort and Tisdale in previous years. Watt said she’d like the program to stop in Hudson Bay, Kelvington or Porcupine Plain in the future.
Since the program is so new that its participants haven’t graduated yet, Watt said it’s hard to gauge how successful it is, yet she has seen many students like Hoffman have their eyes opened to the possibilities.
“They definitely start to think [about] things and I think that they allow themselves to open up to more opportunities and then that’s what eventually shifts them to wanting to come out here.”
Hoffman said that’s something she’s seen from her other classmates.
“I know that a few classmates in my class and in previous years, they’ve kind of had some ideas on where they want to practice going into it and these trips have really opened their eyes and actually changed their minds as to what they want to practice,” she said. “These trips are awesome.”
After the students spent the morning in the Nipawin Hospital, they played a version of the Amazing Race designed to have them get to know the town of Nipawin before going to Tobin Lake for some rest and relaxation – or at least, a nice place to study for the test coming up that next Monday.
