Poff, Tycoles like satellite med school idea

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This article was published 27/07/2012 (4797 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A stand-alone medical school for Brandon University may not be realistic, but the findings of the Brandon Medical Education Study to increase training of doctors in rural environments is encouraging, said Ross Tycoles, chairman of the Assiniboine Municipal Health Committee.

“Honestly, I think all along (a satellite medical school in Brandon) was their plan,” Tycoles said. “I’m disappointed that the stand-alone school didn’t come through, but the fact is the satellite school will help and it will address the concerns rural communities have.”

His view was shared by Brandon University president Deborah Poff, who called the study “a small step in the right direction.”

“It doesn’t surprise me that there would be no recommendation for an independent medical school,” Poff said. “Given the context in Manitoba, I knew that was a long shot beyond belief and I had said that to a lot of people. The satellite school is a half step in that direction.”

Poff said her disappointment with the report rests on a conservative implementation schedule of the findings, which includes more residencies in later years of the four-year medical school program and community campuses with teaching units geared towards practising medicine in rural areas.

The provincial government stated in a press release that six residencies were already planned for Brandon, Steinbach and the Boundary Trails Hospital between Morden and Winkler this year and the study called for more next year. A satellite campus of the University of Manitoba’s medical school in Brandon is listed as a possibility, if more students need to be accepted in the future.

“I think it will take a long while … unless there’s the political will within the implementation committee to move a little faster,” Poff said.

“In every province where this has been happening, which is now the majority of provinces, it’s taken some political will and commitments. The recommendations are not bad, just extremely slow in terms of the time horizon.”

Tycoles said the study recognized the “problem that has always been around” and dealt with those issues, but Dr. Derry Decter, a proponent for training doctors in rural communities, said the study doesn’t go far enough, or fast enough to deal with the doctor shortages faced by rural and northern residents.

“There is a bit of a red herring in there,” Decter said.

“The important thing is that we train medical students in rural and northern locations, based out of Brandon. It doesn’t matter if it’s a satellite school or if it’s freestanding. What makes it work is that the students are trained here. While the small amount of residency spots they have opened up here is good, it’s in an order of magnitude that’s too small to solve the problem.”

Decter said both the provincial government and the University of Manitoba, the province’s only medical school, failed to recognize the need for students to be in rural areas for all of their training, not just the final two years when they work on their residencies.

“The No. 1-rated school, based on its production of family practitioners for rural areas is the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, which has a population of 52,000,” Decter said.

“It’s not any bigger than Brandon, really. Size doesn’t have much to do with this and there really is no other solution. I wish there was, but there doesn’t seem to be. So why are we doing the wrong thing, when the right thing is so obvious?”

Tycoles said the residencies in rural areas may help solve the problem by having medical students work in communities where they are needed, in the later stages of their training.

“The problem we’ve had is trying to get them out here and then retaining them,” Tycoles said.

“This may help us retain rural Manitoba doctors.”

Poff said research has shown a combined approach to solving the doctor shortage in rural Canada works and that part of the solution includes noting where the undergraduate education takes place.

“The implementation plan needs to do some costing about what it would take to not only do the residencies but to fast-track the options to undergraduate education in Brandon and that will take people committed to thinking about it and costing it,” Poff said.

» kborkowsky@brandonsun.com