Surrey hospital to start emergency physician residency program
Credit to Author: Pamela Fayerman| Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 02:23:38 +0000
Surrey Memorial Hospital is launching a unique emergency training program for doctors who are already certified in family medicine but interested in doing another year of training to become emergency medicine specialists.
The new University of B.C. program will help with the shortage of emergency medicine doctors at hospitals across the Fraser Valley where there are currently about 20 vacancies. Across Canada, there were about 500 emergency physician vacancies in 2016 and that number was projected to rise to 1,500 by 2025.
There are two ways to become an emergency medicine physician in Canada — one involves five years of residency training after medical school culminating in certification from the Royal College of Physicians of Canada; the other is a “plus-one” route after finishing a two-year family medicine residency, culminating in certification from the Canadian College of Family Physicians.
In the Lower Mainland, Vancouver General Hospital is the “mother ship” for the five-year program, sending trainees into various hospitals around B.C., while St. Paul’s Hospital has been the designated site for the plus-one training program. But next year, Surrey will become another after UBC and the Ministry of Health agreed to fund two such residency positions each year at Surrey Memorial.
At many hospital ERs across B.C., including Surrey Memorial, there is a mix of such specialists who have finished either of the two training programs.
Doctors doing emergency medicine training get paid about $150,000 a year, while they earn about twice that once they have finished their training.
Dr. Sally Barrio, an emergency physician at Surrey Memorial who did the intense plus-one training through St. Paul’s five years ago, helped champion the new training at the Surrey hospital, which reportedly has the busiest ER in Canada with over 450 patients a day.
She said that the goal is to train ER physicians who will stay in the Fraser Health Region, the fastest growing in the province. While doctors will get most of their training in the Surrey hospital, they will also go to hospitals in places like Abbotsford and Chilliwack, which should also help recruit and retain such medical specialists in the smaller hospitals as well, she said.
“At Surrey hospital, doctors get experience with high volumes of patients, including children in the dedicated pediatric ER. We get many patients with complex and serious illnesses so we think we will produce competent emergency physicians who can work in a variety of places,” added Barrio, who was formerly a family doctor, and then a hospitalist, before deciding to become an emergency physician.
Barrio, a clinical assistant professor, said interviews for the pair of residency positions will be taking place soon for the training that starts next summer. Such doctors must be “self-driven, flexible team players, able to manage high levels of stress, capable of multitasking, dealing with uncertainty all the time, able to thrive on chaos. You can’t be an ER doctor if you want to eat lunch because that rarely happens.
“It helps to have a sense of humour too,” she added. “And to know that they will get no sleep during their training.”
Doctors have long debated the advantages and disadvantages of the different paths, but Barrio said there is no stigma about the shorter training program creating less-qualified doctors.
“I don’t hear people saying one is better than the other. Doctors who do our program will be very well-trained,” said Barrio.
Dr. Craig Murray, head of the ER at Surrey Memorial where about 45 physicians work, said the training program is starting off small but he expects it will grow because of the great need for more emergency physicians.
“This has been a dream for a long time and this hospital is an ideal site for this,” Murray said. “Doctors tend to stay in the communities and hospitals where they train.”
Dr. Tom Green, an assistant program director for the five-year UBC program, one of the biggest in Canada, said he applauds the new Surrey emergency medicine training program.
“The plus-one program is excellent. The community and the hospital will benefit. It’s a great asset to the community,” said Green.
Twitter: @MedicineMatters