UBC medical student Lacey Smith is packing her bags and moving across the province for a unique educational experience on Vancouver Island. Starting in June, she will be one of four inaugural Year 3 students attending the Comox Valley MD Undergraduate Program (MDUP) Integrated Community Clerkship (ICC) Site for a year of longitudinal learning.
“I lived on the Island prior to medical school, and I couldn’t wait to come back,” says Lacey, who attends the UBC MDUP Northern Medical Program in Prince George. “I can’t wait to ride my bike to school every day.”
Long-form Learning
Like other sites in the MDUP’s ICC stream, the new Comox Valley site will offer third-year UBC medical students the opportunity to enhance their clinical education by living and learning within a rural area. Lacey and her peers will receive the same core education as learners in urban centres, but they will train in a significantly different way. Instead of rotating through each clinical discipline separately in a traditional clerkship, they will learn through ongoing exposure to multiple disciplines throughout the entire year. This training will take place in various locations throughout the Comox Valley’s three main communities of Courtenay, Comox, and Cumberland, including in family medicine and specialty clinics, public health and wellness centres, and the North Island Hospital Comox Valley.
“The beauty of the ICC model—the thing that sets it apart from traditional block learning in big centres—is that students learn longitudinally, have the opportunity to know some of their patients longitudinally, and form relationships with mentors longitudinally,” say Dr. Patricia Murphy, ICC Site Director, Comox Valley.
This long-form model is one of the things that drew Lacey to the ICC. “I wanted to experience the longitudinal aspect of primary care and have a lot of variety day-to-day,” she says. “I love the idea of learning outside of the traditional block rotations and getting to experience the roles of primary care providers.”
The model also encourages students to form long-term, trusting relationships with preceptors, mentors, and patients. “When you have relationships, you feel more confident,” say Dr. Murphy. “You trust them and they trust you, and that is just the best way to learn.”
Long-standing Medical Education Community
The new ICC site isn’t the first medical education site in the Comox Valley. Courtenay and Comox are already home to the UBC Strathcona Family Medicine Residency Site (which has a second location in nearby Campbell River). The Comox Valley’s medical education community also regularly welcomes both undergraduate and postgraduate learners training in internal medicine, psychiatry, urology, anesthesiology, and emergency medicine.
“The Comox Valley ICC provides an excellent opportunity to embed learners in a well-established teaching site, where they will learn from the residents and physicians who hopefully will be some of their colleagues in that region one day,” explains Dr. Laura Farrell, Regional Associate Dean, Vancouver Island, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia (UBC) & Academic Director, Vancouver Island, UBC Distributed Programs, University of Victoria (UVic).
Thanks in part to the prior success of these sites and their teachers, Dr. Murphy says the new ICC site will be able to provide learners with a lot of resources. “If [our ICC students] are keen, creative, and inspired, the world is [their] oyster in the terms of a learning environment,” she says.
“I am so appreciative of the work Dr. Murphy and the whole Comox Valley community have done to offer this new opportunity to our UBC medical students,” Dr. Farrell adds.
Long-term Impact
Medical students in the Comox Valley bring value to the area’s healthcare system in several ways, and it’s expected ICC students will do the same.
Dr. Murphy says she has seen learners regularly have powerful and meaningful interactions with patients, bringing joy and positivity to their care. These interactions also deepen learners’ connection with the community, leading many to return after training.
“We know that training medical students in a distributed model results in students staying or returning to their training site to practice and meet the needs of the community,” says Dr. Farrell.
While nothing is set in stone, an eventual return is already on Lacey’s mind. “I love everything about the Island, and my dream is to work in a small community on Vancouver Island or one of the surrounding islands,” she says.