Backgrounder: Medical Classes Begin on Vancouver Island
- Vancouver Island needs more doctors especially in rural, remote and coastal areas. For the first time ever, doctors are being educated on Vancouver Island at the Island Medical Program in Victoria, an expansion of UBC’s faculty of medicine.
- This program, based at the University of Victoria, is part of a unique collaboration of the universities, the Vancouver Island Health Authority and the provincial government. A similar expansion, the Northern Medical Program, is happening at UNBC in Prince George.
- This long term strategy aims to ease regional shortages of doctors, particularly in medium-size, small and rural communities. Research shows that medical graduates often stay in the communities where they have been educated.
- Among the 24 students starting at UVic, there are 14 women and 10 men. About half of the group have either grown up or obtained their undergraduate degrees on Vancouver Island.
- This year’s expansion boosts the number of student doctors at UBC by 72 (24 at each university). By 2010 there will be almost double the number of undergraduate medical school spaces in the province.
- Within days of arriving at UVic, the students will be working with doctors in the community as part of their weekly clinical skills and family medicine experience that continues through year one and year two.
- At the end of their second year, students will spend four to eight weeks in rural communities either on Vancouver Island or elsewhere in the province.
- In third and fourth year, students will do clinical rotations in the major medical and surgical disciplines. The majority of this medical training will take place on Vancouver Island with additional opportunities for students to do electives elsewhere in B.C. or out of province.
- Victoria and Island communities will provide IMP students with valuable medical education experiences that reflect the health-related challenges facing mid-sized urban communities, smaller centres, coastal and more remote communities.
- UVic’s $12 million Medical Sciences Building, constructed to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold standards, was opened by Premier Gordon Campbell in December.
- This state of the art facility has 4,400 square metres of classes and labs and is equipped with electronics and computer technology that will link the students in the three universities.
- The students, who will study identical programs at the three universities, will be linked through sophisticated audiovisual and e-learning technology for simultaneous, interactive learning.
- Other facilities in the building include: computer lab, PBL (problem-based learning) rooms, two research labs for faculty use, and program administration offices
- Students will have 24-hour access to the building and some of the labs using coded security cards to gain admission to the various rooms and services.
- Expansion of the UBC Faculty of Medicine will increase provincial medical enrolment from the current 128 first year students to 224 first year students by 2010. (Note: IMP students will graduate with a UBC medical degree at the end of their four year program.)
Media contacts
Beth Haysom (UVic Communications) at (250) 721-6248 or bhaysom@uvic.ca
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