Bjorn Vegsund's jump from classroom to hospital ward this week has been a memorable one. The third-year medical student was just two days into a stint in Victoria General Hospital's pediatrics wing when he helped at a birth, was the first to listen to the baby's heart, and then prepared documents for the infant's admission to the special-care nursery.
It was an eventful introduction to a year of "rotations" through an array of medical specialties. Vegsund and Ben Wilson, both 27, are entering their third year in the Island Medical Program run out of the University of Victoria but overseen by the University of British Columbia.
White Rock-raised Vegsund and Wilson, from Vancouver, are starting the fall term learning about pediatrics at VGH, under the tutelage of Dr. Cherrie Tan-Dy.
The medical program the pair entered two years ago is part of a three-school initiative that also includes the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George. This approach to medical training got underway in 2004 with $134 million in provincial funding and an aim of increasing the annual number of graduating doctors in B.C. to 224 by 2010, up from 128 in recent years.
Tan-Dy said the students will learn a lot in the coming months, "The third-year clerkship makes them rotate through pediatrics, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, surgery, anesthesia, dermatology, emergency and orthopedics."
The idea is to find a calling within the profession, said Tan-Dy, a neonatologist whose pediatric specialty concentrates on premature births and births with medical problems.
"The students are being exposed to these various disciplines in the hope that at the end of this they figure out that they want to do in terms of a special area of interest that they'll eventually go into."
For the next eight weeks, Vegsund and Wilson will immerse themselves in pediatrics in the special-care nursery, the 30-bed general pediatrics ward, and various community- and hospital-based clinics.
"This is an exciting time for them because this is the first time they'll be able to really apply what they've learned in medical school, through lectures and through problems-based learning, in a real setting."
Both men had a taste of a doctor's life in the summer by spending time with general practitioners in rural settings -- Vegsund on Mayne Island and Wilson in Port McNeill where he was with Dr. Granger Avery, former president of the B.C. Medical Association and an avid supporter of the Island Medical Program.
Avery, one of close to 300 Island physicians who have committed to be instructors, likes the program's focus on producing doctors for rural and remote areas of the province.
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