(E. Versteeg/ICC Alumnus)
Welcome Message
The Peace Liard (Fort St. John) clerkship was established in 2009 and currently supports 4 students per year. Our ICC program is longitudinal; students will follow patients through their health care journey. The student is assigned to a general practitioner preceptor for the entire year and will be a part of a family practice clinic on a weekly basis. The program is flexible and integrated – there are NO rotations. You will have the opportunity to see patients from every discipline, pediatrics, obstetrics, internal medicine and surgery.
Dr. Terri Hopkins
Site Director
General Program Overview
Our Academic program is delivered locally as well as via video conferencing. There is a local Family Practice Residency Training Program and you will work intimately with the residents in your year at Fort St John. In our setting, family physicians (FP) are intimately involved in the care of most hospitalized patients. They perform all the primary care obstetrics and staff the Emergency Department on a 24-hour basis. They also provide many enhanced FP specialty services; Anesthesiology, Oncology, and Mental Health, just to name a few. As an ICC student here, you will have the opportunity to work with the FPs and benefit from their wealth of experience. We also have specialists in the key areas of Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Internal Medicine and Psychiatry as well as Pathology and Radiology. There are Orthopedics visits from Dawson Creek every other week and other specialties visit from further away on a regular basis. To a very large extent, you will gain from this program in proportion to what you are willing to put into it. That is the reality of training outside the academic centre. Our program is best suited for the self-motivated, self-directed learner. While we have set educational objectives, you will be expected to assist in creating and then pursue many of your learning opportunities. Adaptability, well-seasoned problem-solving skills, and the ability to inspire are crucial. You must have the stamina to work on-call and the good sense to get the rest you need to sustain yourself. However, you can’t work all the time, you must set aside time for leisure activities and vacations, while finding strategies that allow you to respond to often-unpredictable patient crises.
Community Profile
We would like to tell you a little bit about the BC Peace Region. The two main population centres are Fort St. John and Dawson Creek, situated some 75 km apart on the Alaska Highway. Other communities in the region include Chetwynd, Hudson’s Hope, Taylor, Tumbler Ridge and Fort Nelson. In all, the population of the region is over 65,000. Health services are provided by the North East Health Services Delivery Area of the Northern Health Authority. The region is one of the fastest growing in Canada due to the resource economy. We also boast the highest per capita birth rate in the province. The new Fort St. John Hospital and Residential Care project opened on June 21, 2012. The facility is on a 40-acre site and includes:
- 55 bed acute and ambulatory care hospital
- 4 bed Intensive Care Unit
- 123- bed residential care facility for seniors
- Endoscopy suite
- 2 state of the art operating rooms, plus procedure room
- Ambulatory clinics including cancer clinics and haemodialysis
- Separate maternity entrance and ward with 7 single-room maternity and 4 labour deliver recovery post-partum
- Emergency Dept
Also, we endeavour to connect you with colleagues and members of the community with similar recreational and cultural interests. We have a vibrant community with bountiful recreation opportunities and Fine Arts scene. Moreover we aim to make all of this happen in a context within which you will work quite hard and accumulate a bank of clinical experiences from which you will draw for the rest of your professional life. You will build relationships at work but also outside of work with physicians and other health care providers. As an ICC FSJ student, you are an integral part of the medical community.
For further information, please contact:
Dr. Terri Hopkins
ICC Site Director, Ft. St. John
terrilh84@gmail.com
Kim Furlong
ICC Site Coordinator, Ft. St. John
kim.furlong@unbc.ca
Mailing Address:
Attention: Kim Furlong, ICC Site Coordinator
Peace Liard Family Practice Residency & Integrated Clerkship Programs
Fort St. John Hospital & Health Centre
8407- 112th Avenue Fort St. John, BC V1J 0J5
Tel: (250) 261-7583 Fax: (250) 261-7656