3. Social Activism: Community and First Nations care; Medical Student Years - part 2 [Updated 2015 11]

You may be asking, all right, you seem to have been very involved in what one might call extracurricular activities, but what about within the medical school itself? When I was working as an orderly, I always remember one of my evaluation visits where the Nursing Supervisor under whom I worked, knowing of my attempts to get into medical school, indicated that she was somewhat surprised that I was not forthcoming with more observations about what I saw in my work and perhaps even suggestions about how things could be improved. That struck a bit of a nerve.

You will recall also how I stated that I had perhaps failed my medical school admission interview because I was too honest with my views. There is something to be said for suppressing those sometimes if one has a greater purpose in mind, I suppose. In any case, those same values were soon found to be common ground with a number of my fellow medical students. There were a number of us that were a very community-minded lot. One went on to become a psychiatrist; whose name some of what you would know if I mentioned it. Another went on to become a Medical Officer of Health in Winnipeg. Another was at the forefront of work with refugees, gender-troubled individuals and then HIV/AIDS patients in Toronto. It was an interesting mixture of students. The last-mentioned and a couple of others where quite radical Marxist-Leninists at the time, and here I was, what some would call an evangelical Christian in their midst!

There was no primary care rotation in Winnipeg at the University of Manitoba at the time and some of us thought that was an oversight. There had been one years earlier but with the ascendancy of specialties, that had been dropped. We began meeting regularly to plan how we could get this back on the curriculum. We even enlisted the advice and support of the Deputy Minister of Health for the province. The government at the time was New Democratic, flush with the national acceptance of Medicare and national hospitalization, so they were quite supportive of anything to do with service to the community. Happily, by the time I got to 4th year, we had a six-week primary care rotation in place. We also made sure that it would be offered with emphasis on going to rural sites because we knew there was a problem getting graduate physicians to leave the larger centers.

Something else we worked at along the same lines to help us gain experience in medicine in a practical sense was volunteering at what was known as The Klinic With a K. This was essentially a public health facility run at that time out of a home near downtown for poorer folks in the neighborhood. There have, I believe, always been medical students who have been interested in serving the underprivileged. It goes with the territory of being young and idealistic. I took my term of service there as well.

Some of the things we did as medical students were also fun. The medical school was known for its annual Beer and Skits, a wild collection of theatrical performances put on by the students for any and all. Those of you who know me might think I was too serious for that and indeed, I am not sure that I actually ever took an active part. However, I did don some Halloween costumes and go with some of my classmates to some of the children's wards to entertain the young inpatients at Halloween. Photography has always been a hobby of mine since learning it from my father at a young age. That plus my own artistic ability led me to be a part of the Manitoba Medical School Asklepios Yearbook committee for a couple of years, which even allowed me to design the covers from 1974-6.

Then, there was the Northern Medical Unit. This was a branch of the Faculty of Medicine that was responsible for providing medical services to remote nursing stations. These served mainly Indian Reserves. Having grown up in the north and really enjoying that lifestyle, I jumped at the chance to join some of my classmates to acquire some gainful summer employment as a student after years 2 and 3 in a couple of different northern communities. 

Who wouldn't jump at the chance to go up north where you could hike and fish – oh, and do things like suture wounds and prescribe medication after only 2 years of medicine! Of course, being a student, we had to work under the supervision of the nursing head of the clinics, which sometimes led to trying situations with nurses who had something of an ax to grind against the medical profession, but there were visiting physicians who supported and mentored us as well, so those were also learning experiences in more ways than one. One of my colleagues in these ventures was the classmate who later became Winnipeg's Medical Officer Of Health while another was later to become the head of the Winnipeg Health Authority, then our alma mater's Dean! These experiences also further fostered my own strong feelings for First Nations peoples who had been my school classmates growing up, and whom I still advocate for, but that is another whole story.

So, even though one is in medical school, and perhaps especially so, one can get involved with things that do bear fruit, especially if one works at it with like-minded individuals. You can get accomplish more as a team than alone.