Medical students experience life at small-town hospital

Four medical students got a chance to experience ‘a day in the life’ at a small-town rural hospital.

Tillsonburg District Memorial Hospital (TDMH) recently welcomed four students from the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry during a Discovery Week 2023 health care placement. The students are among 171 enrolled in the Schulich program.

From May 29 to June 1, first-year medical students Sharif Nathier, Abdul Quadree, Jonathan Moroniti and Arjun Patel had an opportunity to apply some of the classroom knowledge they learned over the past nine months, observing and interacting with internal medicine specialists, surgeons , family physicians and emergency physicians.

“It’s definitely a new experience, and a good experience too,” said Nathier. “I think a lot of us tend to crowd into cities, but this is part of Canadian heritage – a lot of generations were born and raised here, so it’s nice to be exposed to that side of things.”

Moroniti said he gained a greater appreciation and value of community practice, rather than just having experiences in an academic centre.

“I think that’s something I will carry forward and look for experiences in the future, that will allow me to still work or be exposed to community medicine.”

During Discovery Week, the students learned about TDMH’s health care system, interacted with medical staff, met with patients, and observed ortho (hip replacement), foot and hernia surgeries.

“We got to see a lot of different specialties this week,” said Nathier. “Although I will say that a lot of people who were family docs, were serving in the capacity of, for example, an ER physician, or anesthesiologist. And that’s something that’s special when you think about the rural communities, that they really have more flexibility in that regards.

“What I learned, for example, is that family medicine as a practice is much broader than we are often taught. I went into medical school thinking that family medicine was like a clinic that you start in the community. That family docs weren’t really at the hospital. But in fact, we probably saw more family docs in the hospital than outside. And that’s just because they are serving all these different roles. So that opened up my perspective on family medicine.”

“I think the commonality between all of us is that we’re open-minded, interested in trying new things and getting exposure to a variety of areas, like we have during our week here,” said Moroniti.

Quadree said gaining experience, talking to physicians in Tillsonburg, learning about their lifestyles, what made them come to a small town, and what they like about small-town hospitals, was inspirational.

“I think one thing that was important to me,” said Quadree, “was that when I was in London, even first year of medical school, I never really thought about practicing in a rural place. It didn’t even cross my mind… Now I think I am much more open to the idea of ​​practicing in a rural place, that’s for sure.”

“It also seems like practicing in a rural community doesn’t mean you have to be from the rural community either,” noted Patel. “There’s a lot of people coming in from big cities, a lot of people coming from London to practice here, moving from London to here. So that was really cool to see.”

A sense of community can be felt at TDMH, said Moroniti, both patient-physician and real, genuine friendships between colleagues within the hospital.

“It’s really cool how like almost everybody knows everybody,” said Patel.

“Collegiality was one of the things that I noticed, for sure,” said Quadree. “All of the doctors know one another. They’re friends, they know exactly what the other person does. Even within the community, everyone recognizes each other. And if they don’t, they’re just friendly people. There’s a really good sense of community.”

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