Dr. Cheryl Hume, Site Director for the UBC Kootenay Boundary Family Practice Residency and Dr. Willa Henry, Program Director, UBC Department of Family Practice, seated, celebrate the opening of new UBC space with Kootenay Boundary Family Practice residents Drs. Gabe Krahn, Mark Szynkaruk, Alana Benes, and Gretchen Snyman.
UBC medical students and resident physicians now have their own dedicated study and training space at Kootenay Lake Hospital (KLH).
The new learning areas will be used primarily by third-year students with the Trail Integrated Community Clerkship program and resident physicians from the Kootenay Boundary Family Practice Residency program who complete training at the hospital, located in Nelson.The new space on the fourth floor of the existing hospital provides a clinical skills room, study stations, and lounge area that was purpose-built for their specific needs.
Cheryl Hume, site director for the UBC Kootenay Boundary Family Practice Residency and Integrated Community Clerkship Programs, says these new facilities help make Nelson and KLH a vital part of distributed rural medical education in the Kootenay Boundary region.
“These facilities are key to supporting physicians-in-training with the necessary resources for effective learning,” Dr. Hume says. “They also provide a place for Nelson medical staff to teach and engage with residents and students, who in turn benefit immensely from working with these highly-accomplished health professionals.”
Construction of the 645-square-foot space was undertaken “in-house” by Interior Health (IH), helping to significantly limit the cost. The project also included upgrades to the videoconference capabilities of two meeting rooms to support educational needs of learners and professional development opportunities for Nelson health professionals.
“We are very supportive of the Integrated Community Clerkship and Family Practice Residency programs, and see our partnership with UBC as a tremendous opportunity to attract future physicians to Nelson and the region,” says Brigitte McDonough, Interior Health’s acute health service administrator for Kootenay Boundary. “We are grateful to our plant services team, who did an excellent job redeveloping space on the fourth floor of the hospital to help suit the needs of students and resident physicians.”
“We are fortunate to be able to create this space for our learners and faculty in Nelson,” says Allan Jones, Regional Associate Dean, Interior, for the UBC Faculty of Medicine. “The project is another prime example of our collaborative partnership with IH to best support the delivery of medical education across the region.”
Based in Trail, the Integrated Community Clerkship program provides training for third-year UBC medical students in hospitals and family practice clinics. Students complete internal medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics/gynecology training rotations at KLH.
The Kootenay Boundary Family Practice Residency Program is a two-year training program based in Trail and Nelson. The program, launched in July 2015, admits four family practice residents each year.