Where does one start? Especially keeping in mind my aim in writing this is to put something down that can be enlightening to others entering the career of medicine a a mentor. This is not just to be a biography. That should go elsewhere.
I thought of starting with my residency and moving onto my practice history. However, I recognize that there are some in medical school and perhaps even in residency who may still have some questions about whether they are in the right place or whether they are where they are at at the right time. Therefore, a few words on how I got into medicine might even be helpful.
Some readers may have had aspirations to get into medical school from an early age. It might be worth thinking about where those ideas came from, or why you had to them. What stimulated your interest in medicine? Was there a source of inspiration? Or was it simply family and cultural pressure? In some cultures, that is certainly seen as a premium career to aim for.
Our only daughter, perhaps with a physician as father, although her mother and I never really promoted that career choice, had aspirations of becoming a physician almost before she started school. It even got to the point where she wanted to be a cardiologist. It was vogue then to apply letters and numbers to T-shirts and she ended up with one that said across her back, "MD 2010." However, that idea was abandoned when she got into university and began looking at career choices in earnest. Perhaps she realized how many years I had spent in education and wasn't prepared to follow that path.
Indeed, I sometimes chuckle about the fact, that although I have no illusions about my knowledge or wisdom, my years in post-secondary education quite generously eclipse the 12 years spent prior to that. I say 12 because there was no Kindergarten in the community I grew up in at that time, so I started in Grade 1. In fact, because the community was growing, my starting school was delayed for a whole year because there was no room in the old log (yes, I go a l-o-n-g way back) building which had housed the school for many years. However, my teacher parents worked diligently with me that year and by noon of my first day of school, my teacher simply placed me in Grade 2. I wonder how many other people have ever only spent one half-day in Grade One?
I had never thought of entering medicine during my public school years. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that, other than that my parents were both teachers, our family background prior to that was agrarian, and perhaps medicine was a remote prospect in that environment. I think the first time the possibility of a career in medicine ever crossed my path was when a businessman friend of the family asked me when I was in Grade 12 whether I had considered that. Some would say I obviously did not think about that much after that because I did not even enrol for university upon graduation from high school. I followed my father's footsteps into the local Bible college. This was the first year though that this Institute provided cross-registration of introductory courses with the University, so I was beginning to accumulate some credits in that regard.
It was after the first year in that college when I was at work at my summer job that I actually had an experience that did result in my setting my face towards medicine. I was working at a wood box factory near where we lived in North Kildonan, a suburb of Winnipeg. Besides making boxes, among other things we made were wooden frames for box springs for mattresses. When a co-worker got a sliver in has hand when we were fashioning one unit I helped him get it out. Now, I don't know what you might believe about such things. What happened next was something I had never quite experienced before. It was as if a voice that could only be God's said, "You were able to help this man. You can help a lot more people by going into medicine." Wow! As I said, I wasn't even considering medicine seriously. My dream job was to be a car designer, but my ethics were telling me architecture was probably more appropriate.
Now, at that time. part of my father's responsibility was as a chaplain in the fairly new, then, Manitoba Rehabilitation Hospital [MRH] in Winnipeg, where we then lived. I had accompanied him on some of his activities there. Thinking that working in a hospital might give me some indication of whether medicine was really a career wanted to pursue, I was able to utilize his connections with the head nurse of the institution to get a job as a Nursing Orderly. Not only did that give me a good grounding in the basics of institutional medicine and healthcare, it provided me a good source of income as I continue to support myself through my ongoing education until I got into medical school eventually. I am still proud of the Certificate Of Nursing Orderly that I got after taking a three-month course as part of this job. In those days that also meant a $30 a month raise from $225 a month to $255 a month!
After graduating from the three-year program of this college in 1967, I returned to university. However, I needed money so I put in a year at work as an orderly on a rehabilitation ward for patients with arthritis and spinal cord injuries at the MRH. Looking back, considering what transpired subsequently, I have never regretted my years at Canadian Mennonite Bible College. In fact, that is where the inspiration came from that eventually got me into psychiatry. As part of our course on Christian Education, I read a book by a Christian Swiss psychiatrist Paul Tournier called The Meaning of Persons. Another influential book in he same vein in that course was The Struggle of the Soul by Lewis Joseph Sherrill. The other big benefit of those three years prior to my pre-med university days was that I was already learning about balance in life. That will be the subject of a while blog entry in itself at some point.
Needless to say, getting back into math and science was not the easiest after that time lapse without studying those subjects. In those days one could apply for medicine after only two years of science, so I applied at the University of Saskatchewan were I was then studying, having moved there in the spring of 1968 [My whole family and moved to SK]. My first application to medical school was unsuccessful. I went on to complete my Bachelor of Science and as part of my re-application following that, I was also granted an interview. I do not believe this was a customary practice at the time. I was still not accepted for medical school. Was there a lesson there? Well, that was Saskatoon in 1971. if you know anything about your medical history, you will know that that was less than a decade after the introduction of Medicare in Saskatchewan, which received a quite hostile reaction from the medical profession. I was perhaps a somewhat naïve and idealistic university graduate, product of the 60s, who looked favourably on things socialistic. I suspect that did not go over with the faculty establishment who interviewed me and are reviewed my application.
I sometimes think that having to work my way through university did not help either, as much as that taught me a lot about being self-sufficient and independent. Those shifts at work, valuable as they were in terms of learning about what goes in hospitals from the inside, took away from hours of studying that could have helped me boost my marks, if that would've made a difference.
At that time, I do not believe it was as common as now for would-be-medical-students to apply to as many schools as they do now. I had only applied to my local school. With some encouragement from a resident whom I knew from my work in the hospital, I extended my 3rd application to the University of Manitoba, and was accepted the first time around. That was the fall of 1972. I sometimes think Providence had a big hand in that. I quickly found myself in a supportive community of like-minded physicians - should I say mentors? - and classmates who became good friends. That type of support is invaluable in medicine.
No comments:
Post a Comment