Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management, Southern Medical Program
Office: Reichwald Health Sciences Centre Phone: 250.807.8601 Email:warren.brock@ubc.ca
Dr. Marjorie Docherty was recently honoured as the inaugural recipient of the BC College of Family (BCCFP) Physicians Coin. The new award created by the BCCFP acknowledges the tremendous work of family physicians across British Columbia.
Dr. Docherty is a family physician in Kelowna, Clinical Professor with the UBC Department of Family Medicine, and Clerkship Site Leader, Rural Family Practice for the Southern Medical Program based at UBC Okanagan. She is recognized by the BCCFP for her energy, passion, and commitment to family medicine in addition to her work supporting learners and colleagues from medical school through to residency training and eventual family practice in communities across the province.
“Dr. Docherty has been an outstanding champion of family medicine for both educators and learners throughout her career,” say Dr. Allan Jones, Regional Associate Dean, Interior. “We are proud of her many accomplishments and applaud her recognition with this new BCCFP award.”
The Southern Medical Program is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Robyn Hutchings as interim Director, Faculty Development for the Southern Medical Program (SMP) based at the Clinical Academic Campus at Kelowna General Hospital (KGH).
Dr. Hutchings is a pediatric emergency medicine physician and Clinical Instructor with the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics. While based in Kelowna, Dr. Hutchings splits her time commuting monthly to Edmonton for her work in the emergency department at Stollery Children’s Hospital.
For the past five years, Dr. Hutchings has served as an Assistant Clinical Professor for the University of Alberta’s Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine. She actively supports medical education opportunities for students, residents, and fellows as part of her practice as well as the pediatric emergency medicine simulation program at Stollery Children’s Hospital. For SMP students, she serves as a preceptor for clinical skills and portfolio coach for the Flexible Enhanced Learning (FLEX) course.
As Director, Faculty Development, Dr. Hutchings will be responsible for the planning and implementation of faculty development programs at the SMP’s primary education sites in Kelowna, Kamloops, Vernon, and Trail in addition to supporting clinical faculty across the Interior Health (IH) region.
Dr. Michael Purdon
The SMP would also like to recognize the tremendous work of Dr. Michael Purdon as outgoing Director, Faculty Development. Over the past three and half years, Dr. Purdon has made great strides in fostering and advancing faculty development opportunities for clinical faculty at the SMP’s primary education sites and rural communities throughout the IH region.
He spearheaded the development of the SMP Master Teacher Certificate Program enabling countless faculty to enhance their teaching and mentoring skills and positively impact the learning environment for our students. We are truly grateful for Dr. Purdon’s efforts as faculty development champion and pleased he will continue to be engaged with our program as a preceptor for SMP students.
Congratulations to Dr. Paul Dagg for receiving the UBC Faculty of Medicine’s 2017 Clinical Faculty Award for Excellence in Community Practice Teaching. Dr. Dagg is a Kamloops psychiatrist and Clinical Associate Professor with the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. The annual award honours senior clinical faculty members who have demonstrated sustained excellence in teaching over the course of their careers.
Dr. Dagg is recognized as an enthusiastic and effective educator for the Southern Medical Program (SMP). He was a founding participant and organizer of the Neuropsychiatry week academic rounds which are now broadcast throughout BC and to sites in Alberta and Manitoba. He is currently involved with clinical teaching as well as leading academic half-days sessions and seminars on schizophrenia and psychosis for third-year SMP students training at Royal Inland Hospital. Students consistently acknowledge his excellent teaching approach and actively engaging them in the care of patients.
The Southern Medical Program is pleased to announce the appointments of Drs. Graeme McCauley and Gina Polley as Year 4 Preparation for Medical Practice (PMP)/Transition into Professional Practice (TIPP) Co-Leads and Dr. Kirk Lawlor as Year 4 Electives Lead for the Southern Medical Program.
Dr. Graeme McCauley is a respirologist and Clinical Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Medicine, Division of Respiratory Medicine. Dr. McCauley completed his medical degree at UBC (MD’74) followed by a rotating internship at Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. He returned to UBC to complete a year of anesthesiology training and spent five years in general practice and anesthesia in Williams Lake, BC. He then returned to complete training in respirology and critical care at the University of Alberta. For the past 33 years, he has worked at KGH where he also serves as Chair of the Department of Medicine. Dr. McCauley is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada and member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia.
Dr. Gina Polley is a general internist at KGH and former chief resident of the University of Alberta’s General Internal Medicine Subspecialty Program. Dr. Polley completed her medical degree at University of Saskatchewan and internal medical residency training at the University of Alberta. Originally from Kelowna, she has recently completed her residency training and returned to the Okanagan. Dr. Polley is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada and member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia.
Dr. Kirk Lawlor is a vascular surgeon, KGH Division Head, and Clinical Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Surgery. Dr. Lawlor completed his medical degree, surgery residency, vascular surgery fellowship at the University of Western Ontario (UWO). Additionally, he holds a Master’s of Education from the University of Toronto. Prior to beginning work at KGH in 2010, Dr. Lawlor worked at the London Health Sciences Centre University Hospital where he served as the Program Director of Vascular Surgery. Dr. Lawlor is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) and BC College of Physicians and Surgeons. For the RCPSC, he also serves as Subspecialty Committee Member and Examiner for Vascular Surgery. Dr. Lawlor can be reached at 250-878-6113 or kirk.lawlor@interiorhealth.ca.
At the same time, the SMP would like to acknowledge the outstanding work of Dr. Katharine Smart as the outgoing Year 4 Electives and PMP Course Lead. Dr. Smart joined the SMP in 2013 and made great strides in developing the Year 4 Electives program in the BC Interior in addition to leading the development of the Year 4 PMP course for SMP students. This past month, she relocated to the Yukon with her family and now works at the Klondyke Medical Clinic in Whitehorse.
Community-based prevention and management are key goals
The Faculty of Medicine Southern Medical Program is launching a new research program aimed at progressing the research front when it comes to the prevention and management of chronic diseases.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, three in five Canadians over the age of 20 live with a chronic illness and four in five are at risk. In Canada, 67 per cent of all deaths each year are caused by four major chronic conditions: cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and chronic respiratory disease.
Based at UBC Okanagan, the newly-introduced Chronic Disease Prevention Program (CDPP) will harness the strengths of researchers from both Okanagan and Vancouver campuses and Interior Health (IH) to support new discoveries and knowledge translation in this ever-pressing domain. Kathleen Martin Ginis, a professor with UBC Faculty of Medicine and UBC Okanagan Faculty of Health and Social Development, is the founding CDPP director.
“Our end goal is to foster research excellence that’s responsive to the healthcare needs of our region’s communities both urban and rural, and advances the international research field,” says Martin Ginis.
The first step, she explains, is to recruit an interdisciplinary team of clinical and implementation scientists and community health researchers who will work under the CDPP umbrella. Martin Ginis also plans to establish new partnerships with health professionals and community-health organizations throughout the IH region.
“Our collective efforts will focus on new investigations in the areas of physical activity and nutrition/healthy eating, and diabetes, cardiovascular disease, neurotrauma and neurodegenerative diseases, and implementing those research findings into the community,” she adds.
To bolster the program’s development, Martin Ginis will serve as the inaugural Reichwald Family UBC Southern Medical Program Chair in Preventive Medicine. Established by the Reichwald family, the endowed chair will accelerate the development of an academic research program that advances our understanding of chronic disease and establishes new community-based prevention programs.
“The growing prevalence of chronic diseases within our region’s health populations has brought prevention and management to the front lines of healthcare delivery,” says Dr. Allan Jones, regional associate dean, Interior, UBC Faculty of Medicine. “We are deeply committed to contributing to this research arena and directly benefiting the communities where our students, faculty, and researchers train and serve.”
BIOGRAPHY
Kathleen Martin Ginis is a professor with UBC Faculty of Medicine Department of Medicine, Division of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the UBC Okanagan Faculty of Health and Social Development, School of Health and Exercise Sciences. She is the founding director of the Southern Medical Program’s Chronic Disease Prevention Program and inaugural Reichwald Family UBC Southern Medical Program Chair in Preventive Medicine.
Martin Ginis is the founding director of Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Action Canada, a national alliance of community-based organizations and university-based researchers working together to advance physical activity participation in people with spinal cord injury. She is also the principal investigator of the Canadian Disability Participation Project and an ICORD (International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries) principal investigator. Her research studies are some of the first to outline the psychosocial benefits and strategies for increasing physical activity in adults with spinal cord injury.
The Southern Medical Program (SMP) Class of 2020 invites the Okanagan medical community, family, and friends to join them for the 2017 SMP Charity Golf Classic on Sunday, October 15th at the Harvest Golf Club in Kelowna, BC.
SMP students have once again partnered with the Canadian Mental Health Association to help support the new CMHA facility, Foundry Kelowna. With each ticket sold, the students are hoping to help positively impact the lives of youth living with mental health issues in the community.
The 2017 Golf Classic will include 18 holes of golf at the beautiful Harvest Golf Club, buffet dinner, and silent auction. Dinner tickets can be purchased separately and reduced prices are available for children.
The UBC Faculty of Medicine MD Admissions Office is hosting an evening information session for prospective medical students at Royal Inland Hospital. Learn about the admission requirements, application process, and how UBC is training the next generation of physicians for our province.
The session will be held on Wednesday, November 1st from 6:00 to 7:00 pm in the Ken Lepin lecture theatre in the Clinical Services Building at Royal Inland Hospital (311 Columbia Street, Kamloops, BC).
Registration is required and spots are limited. Note:High school students are limited to one guest (i.e. parent) per student.
Register at https://survey.ubc.ca/s/md-admissions-kamloops
For more information, contact Warren Brock, Communications Manager, Southern Medical Program at warren.brock@ubc.ca or 250.807.8601.
Each summer, students from across the UBC Faculty of Medicine’s MD Undergraduate Program have the opportunity to pursue their passion for medical research and work closely with faculty members from across the province through the Summer Student Research Program (SSRP).
From exploring the benefits of exercise for stroke recovery to understanding how to provide culturally safe care, students in the SSRP are encouraged to take a deeper look into a wide variety of research topics.
We checked in with Rouzbeh Ghadiry-Tavi, a fourth-year medical student in the Southern Medical Program (SMP), to learn more about his research on cardiac function and physical activity in children with congenital heart disease (CHD) and how the experience has influenced his studies.
What sparked your interest in research?
My first research experience was at a cardiac physiology lab during my undergrad. A friend of mine told me about a young professor, Damon Poburko, a UBC Pharmacology and Therapeutics alumnus and Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology Professor at Simon Fraser University, who was at the beginning stages of establishing his lab. When I first met Dr. Poburko, we ended up talking for an hour, mostly about physiology and his research. I left the meeting excited about the prospect of learning from a cool guy who was very passionate about what he did.
Describe your research project?
We already know from previous research that children with congenital heart disease (CHD) have low physical activity levels and that only 10 per cent of them meet the recommended physical activity levels, as suggested by the guidelines. What we wanted to know is whether these low levels can be explained by impaired cardiac function or if other sociocultural factors can best account for them.
My supervisor, Kevin Harris, Assistant Professor and Pediatric Interventional Cardiologist at BC Children’s Hospital, provided me access to a database that contains data on physical activity levels (objectively measured with accelerometers) and cardiac function (as measured by echocardiography) in children with CHD. My role was to extract and analyze the data and contribute to the manuscript of a research article.
How will this research experience help you in your medical studies?
It gave me valuable exposure to pediatric cardiology. By engaging in this research, I’ve been able to participate in the cardiology teaching sessions, clinical and academic rounds, and see what cardiologists do in the catheterization lab and in the clinic.
How has it influenced your perspective on medicine and patient care?
We often hear ‘medicine is always changing,’ but I think a more accurate statement is that we keep changing medicine because we keep finding better ways of doing it. It is fine to rely on guidelines and resources and keep using an already existing body of knowledge to treat patients. But I personally find it very exciting to go beyond that by improving our patient care in novel ways. If I can look back at my life and be able to say clinicians are doing this one thing differently because of what I found and the questions that I answered, that would be a sweet life.
What advice do you have for other students interested in pursuing a SSRP?
Do it for you! The reason I wake up early and dedicate my days to this research project is because I absolutely love what I do and therefore it does not feel like work.
As the new academic year begins, we caught up with some of our Southern Medical Program (SMP) students heading back to the lecture theatres and hospital bedsides. Here’s a Q&A with Claire MacKinlay:
Claire MacKinlay, 3rd Year Southern Medical Program student Hometown: Kamloops
What inspired you to pursue medicine? I loved the combination of scientific detective work and being able to be present during the big, trying moments in peoples’ lives, hopefully making a difference for the better.
What are you looking forward to most this upcoming year? Clerkship is full of exciting firsts! First delivery of a baby, first time assisting at a surgery, first trauma patient, first code (I’m cheating a bit because 3 months in I’ve already had all of these firsts!). Mostly I’m excited to see myself progress over this year. Clerkship is a really cool opportunity to push yourself into new roles while having the safety net of a preceptor there to guide you along the way. I want to make sure I take full advantage of that and see where it takes me. I also have a lot of firsts happening in my personal life this year – first house purchase, first puppy and a wedding!
What’s one thing we might be surprised to learn about you? I took up painting this year. An hour or so at the easel became my reward for a productive study session.
Best piece of advice: Don’t worry about how long it will take to pursue a potential goal – the time will pass by anyway. Write a detailed vision for your life 10 years from now, right down to the smell of your coffee in the morning, and design your life around what you need to do to get there.
What superpower do you wish you had? Being a morning person.
Where in the world would you like to get lost? The Italian countryside, preferably on a bicycle, with a picnic basket and my partner.
Each summer, a number of our students immerse themselves in research with funding support from the Southern Medical Program (SMP), The Colin & Lois Pritchard Foundation, and the Faculty of Medicine’s Summer Student Research Program.
Alysson Hamilton, second-year Southern Medical Program student
We connected with Alysson Hamilton, second-year SMP student to discuss her research experience from this past summer. Hamilton worked alongside Dr. Mary Jung, Associate Professor with the UBC Okanagan Faculty of Health and Social Development on a project titled Small Steps for Big Changes in the Community.
Describe your research project: Small Steps for Big Changes is an exercise and diet intervention for individuals at risk for developing type 2 diabetes. I was involved with various aspects of the project including telephone screening and baseline testing of participants, adapting motivational interviewing materials to be used in counseling sessions, and transcribing qualitative interviews about the experiences and perspectives of individuals with prediabetes.
Why were you interested in working on this project? I am very interested in preventative medicine and the power of a healthy lifestyle, and I wanted to learn techniques to promote positive behaviour change.
What’s one thing that surprised you about the research? I was surprised by how much I have enjoyed being involved in research. Coming into this project as part of the FLEX (Flexible and Enhance Learning) course, I had no idea what to expect as I had no research involvement prior to medical school. I have loved working with this team and learning about different aspects of the research process.
How will this research experience help you in your future medical studies? The communication skills and behaviour change techniques that I have learned will be helpful in future patient encounters. This experience has also provided me with a deeper understanding of different types of research and the research process which should allow me to better analyze relevant medical literature as I continue through my studies.
How has it influenced your perspective on medicine and patient care? From speaking to participants and listening to qualitative interviews, I have gained more insight into the difficulties of making behavioural changes and the unique challenges and strengths of each individual. This has motivated me to be more than a physician who says “go exercise” and instead to work with patients to determine what lifestyle changes they want to make and how those changes can be incorporated into their lives.
Dr. Marjorie Docherty was recently honoured as the inaugural recipient of the BC College of Family (BCCFP) Physicians Coin. The new award created by the BCCFP acknowledges the tremendous work of family physicians across British Columbia.
