A group of first-year medical students spent last week in Morden and Winkler to get a taste of both rural health care and rural life.
The annual Rural Week initiative had students spend time at the C.W. Wiebe Medical Centre, the Menzies Medical Centre, and the Boundary Trails Health Centre.
“The week was great. We’ve had a diverse range of different exposures. I worked with a couple different doctors at Menzies Medical Centre and then I also worked on the chemo ward,” said student Kara Klassen, who is originally from Morden but has been in Winnipeg for the last several years.
“It was a really fun experience to have gone from having lived in the community and having grown up here,” she said. “It was a really interesting experience to have been on the other side and having helped facilitate medical care.
“Since I moved away, the community has really grown and expanded, and there’s a lot more services available to people now. A lot more doctors have come to the area too. It’s been a really interesting journey to learn what that looks like,” Klassen said. “As first-year medical students, we don’t have a lot of clinical exposure yet, so it’s been really great to learn some hands-on clinical skills as well.”
“Being able to spend a week in a rural community like Winkler was great,” said Sohaib Jomha, who is originally from Lebanon. “I found everyone so welcoming, so nice. I did not feel out of place even once.
“I think the number one thing I noticed right away was just how connected the community is,” he said. “We’ve experienced mainly the health care system, but every doctor, every physician, every nurse, they’re also so nice to one another and so connected … they were all always available to us.
“I could see myself working in a rural area and would probably prefer to work in a rural area rather than urban,” Jomha said. “I could see myself coming back to Winkler.”
Dr. Sherwin Gacutan, who is one of the site leads with the residency program, feels Rural Week is a very worthwhile initiative.
“I came here as a med student and I saw how rural medicine was here,” he said. “I fell in love with the rural life. This is exactly how I want to practice medicine with a mix of in-hospital, ER, clinic, surgical assist … kind of the breadth of medicine.
“We’re so happy to have med students come and visit and see how rural medicine is here,” Gacutan added. “We really enjoy having these students out here and even just showing them around, not just the medicine part of things but also just rural life.
“This area is a rural setting that is growing quickly with great people and diversity, and we’re glad to have students come and experience it.”
