The Parkland Family Medicine Residency Program focuses on training physicians to deliver health care in rural areas.
Dr. Scott Kish, the site director for the program through the University of Manitoba, says that it has been having a strong impact on Dauphin since 1991.
"The vast majority of the physicians in Dauphin have come as a result of having the residency program, so they're graduates from our program... Many physicians in the surrounding communities... There are some of our physicians in Ste. Rose, Swan River, Brandon, Neepawa, Selkirk, Portage la Prairie... so many of our previous graduates have gone on to work in other rural settings in Manitoba," he adds.
Dr. Kish went on to say that the success that they've had in Dauphin is now being replicated across the province and that this was only possible because of that success.
"I think we're in a healthy position... There's a shortage of family physicians... across the country... I think there's lots of need for ongoing training and for training physicians in rural practices... I think there's going to be an ongoing expansion of rural training programs across the country," he adds.
According to Dr. Kish, they've been really fortunate to be able to recruit and retain physicians locally.
"I think that's one of the primary benefits and then I think the secondary benefit is just being able to seed and expand the physician base in other areas in the province and in rural Canada," he adds.
Dr. Scott Kish says that if someone from outside Canada is already a physician and they're looking to work in Canada, they would have to go through the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Manitoba to evaluate their previous training.
"For some of those physicians, there's... a one-year assessment process that they could do through the College. Some of our students would then apply for a competitive match through the Canadian Residency Matching Service (CaRMS) and that's, unfortunately, a very competitive process and it's tough to get into our program, so out of seven hundred applicants to our program that are international grads, we would pick two of them," he adds.
Dr. Kish went on to say that it's less competitive for those who graduated from Canadian universities to be accepted into the program.
"We would have, in that situation, around eighty applicants for four positions," he adds.
Anyone interested in learning more about the residency program can visit the University of Manitoba website.
