Building relationships with our Manitoba med students is a key factor to building our medical staff throughout the province.
Physician Recruitment and Retention Coordinator for Prairie Mountain Health’s Rural Centres, Tamara Kemp-Boulet, says that relationship-building begins when students are in their first-year medical program at the University of Manitoba.
At the end of January and in the beginning of February, Prairie Mountain Health facilitated a total of 94 first- and second-year medical students through the RIG program (Rural Interest Group) which facilitates these students to spend a Friday evening together with local medical staff, to prepare for the following Saturday to work shoulder-to-shoulder with doctors, nurses and EMS staff in a rural setting. This year's RIG program brought med students to Brandon hospital, Killarney hospital and Swan River.
Between the medical 1 and 2 years, there are approximately 260 students, but over these two recent RIG weekend events, PMH has exposed 94 of these students to rural medicine in the Westman Region.
"Them getting to know us and us getting to know them, and doing events like this," she adds.
"... at the very least we would just love to see them stay in Manitoba."
The next event for these U of M med students comes up the last week of May. The first-year med students have a mandatory rural week and Kemp-Boulet has reached out to Prairie Mountain Health's rural clinics to see how many students they would like to host for the end of May.
"The students actually spend a week with a rural physician in their clinic and shadow them," she explains. "Quite often the community will come together and do something with the students in the evenings, just to showcase their own community. So, that is really important to build these relationships."
Thus far, Killarney, Deloraine and Souris have committed to participating in the rural week with these first-year med students.
Kemp-Boulet says as these first-year students move into their second year of medical training they can attend the RIG event again, and the relationship-building continues.
"And so, when they become residents in their med program, they become very well-versed in Prairie Mountain Health because of the events that we've been doing. We have different retreats for the residents as well."
"So, you do hope when they're done their medical training, they would consider staying in Prairie Mountain Health. But at the very least we would just love to see them stay in Manitoba," she adds.
Please listen to more with Tamara Kemp-Boulet below!