Canadian Global Health Experiences | Family Medicine | School of Medicine

Residents may chose as some of their core or elective rotations clinical experiences that focus on the health and needs of people experiencing health inequities in Canada. Relevant populations would include aboriginal populations, persons experiencing the health effects of poverty, new immigrants and refugees to Canada, persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities, or incarcerated individuals, to name a few.

The Department of Family Medicine has a variety of opportunities available for residents as part of the core curriculum, and these are listed below. Residents are also encouraged to seek out their own relevant opportunities in Kingston or elsewhere.

Moose Factory

Weeneebayko Area Health Authority provides health services to over 10,000 Cree peoples in five First Nations communities and one mixed-ethnicity municipality (Mooseonee) in the Mushkegowuk Territories of Western James Bay. The base hospital, Weeneebayko General Hospital, is located in Moose Factory island at the mouth of the Moose River. The community is the oldest English-speaking settlement in Ontario and the second of the Hudson Bay Company in Canada dating back to 1670.

Comprehensive primary care is provided including emergency medicine, obstetrics, hospitalist, surgical assist, outpost coastal community primary care and office clinic. Residents will be exposed to numerous technical and advanced procedures and practise in a logistically and medically complicated learning environment under the close supervision of an experienced supervisor.

The rotation philosophy is designed to be first and foremost an educational experience, and not at all a 'service' rotation. As part of their training, residents will participate in a weekly seminar course that addresses the non-clinical aspects of Indigenous peoples' health including history, politics, law, anthropology, epidemiology and community development. Residents will find the rotation highly demanding and equallyrewarding.

All residents applying to this rotation must already have completed their core rotations in Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine, Orthopedics, Obstetrics and Pediatrics, as general abilities in these areas will be assumed and are necessary for adequate performance in this rotation. Residents are also expected to have completed their core Aboriginal health curriculum, and as of January 2016 will be expected to have completed pre-departure preparation prior to their Moose Factory rotation.

Moose Factory is a core family medicine site for PGY2.

Sioux Lookout

Coming Soon!

Kingston Community Health Centres

KCHC is a multi-service, multi-site Community Health Centre. It provides clinical and social services at three main locations where it makes special efforts to serve people who have a higher risk of poor health, or people who are having difficulty finding health care because of language or cultural barriers, poverty or isolation. In all activities, special attention is paid to the social, emotional, and financial needs of our clients since these are the pre-requisites of health.

The KCHC rotation is a clinical family practice rotation which incorporates a strong introduction to multidisciplinary team work (OT, Social Work, Dietitian, Diabetes Educator, Footcare Nurse), an optional introduction to the Women’s Clinic at KGH (therapeutic abortions), and a family practice obstetrics component. Residents at KCHC will also have the opportunity to interact with and discover other program areas such as Better Beginnings for Kingston Children (BBKC) Immigrant Services for Kingston and Area (ISKA), Pathways for Education (P2E) and Street Health Centre (SHC).

Kingston Community Health Centres Clinical and Policy Rotation

As explained above, KCHC is a multidisciplinary Community Health Centre whose primary care team aims to provide clinical care for persons living in poverty, as well as persons facing other inequities in access to healthcare. KCHC is also an organization that engages in health advocacy for populations facing inequities in health through a variety of means ranging from individual clinical advocacy to community-based advocacy (ex. Kingston Dental Coalition) and municipal-level policy advocacy (ex. Poverty Reduction Initiative)

This combined clinical and policy rotation gives residents an opportunity to practice community-based primary care at KCHC in an organization dedicated to health equity, and at the same time, under the mentorship of Dr Kieran Moore from KFL&A Public Health, to engage in a project related to health policy relevant to the CHC clients. Examples of previous resident initiatives include a protocol for naloxone prescribing to high-risk patients.

NKCHC is a core family medicine site for PGY-2.

Poverty Alleviation and Harm Reduction

This is a non-clinical elective for residents interested in health policy. Tailored with Dr. Kieran Moore at KFL&A to meet residents’ interests, this elective can combine a focus on health policy related to poverty alleviation as it affects health, as well as that related to harm reduction through the lens of illegal opioid use. Residents will have the opportunity to participate in meetings with community organizations, with City council, and with other public health actors, and to consider analysis and implementation of policy related to improving health equity throughout the City of Kingston, as well as at provincial and national levels. This elective will provide residents with exposure to health advocacy in action, giving them the opportunity to explore potential policy-related work in the future.

This is an elective rotation.

Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Family Medicine residents have the opportunity to do an elective in Care of Adults with Intellectual and Development Disabilities through Queen's. This four-week rotation includes complex continuing primary care of adults with IDD, an adult IDD consulting clinic, dual diagnosis psychiatry, developmental genetics clinic, epileptology and sleep disorders clinic, and physical and rehabilitation medicine clinics. There are also special clinics such as seating clinic and enteral feeding clinic, as well as opportunities to observe allied health professional assessments (i.e. OT, PT, SLP, and psychology).

The elective is open to interested family medicine residents. For more information about this elective program, please contact Dr. Liz Grier at iddprogram@dfm.queensu.ca. Care of Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities is an exciting and emerging field in which family physicians are playing a key role at the national level and within the College of Family Physicians of Canada. For more information about this IDD work within the CFPC, please visit the CFPC's Developmental Disabilities Program Committee website.

For Information about all our IDD Programs, please visit the department’s Intranet or contact Dr. Meg Gemmill, Director of Developmental Disabilities, at the following email: iddprogram@dfm.queensu.ca.