October 28th, 2009
Filed under: Medicine
The College of Family Physicians of Canada’s (CFPC) announced the 2009 Family Physicians of the Year on October 27th. The Reg L. Perkin Awards recognize ten outstanding family physicians – one from each province - for providing exceptional care to their patients, making meaningful contributions to the health and well-being of their communities, and for dedicating themselves as researchers or educators of future generations of family doctors. Award recipients are nominated by their peers, patients, colleagues, and community leaders.
Dr. Darcy Johnson, a University of Manitoba alumnus, is one of the ten Family Physicians of the Year. He graduated from the University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine in 1981 and was awarded Certification in Family Medicine in 1983, becoming a Fellow of the CFPC in 2004. In addition to practice in North East Winnipeg, he has provided medical care at Stony Mountain Penitentiary since 1990.
He is highly regarded for his leadership in continuing professional development as well as supporting system change for family doctors. Within the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, he has served as a Medical Leader, participating in Primary Care Renewal which includes the North East Primary Care Project, Physician Integrated Network Initiative and Primary Care Advisory Committee.
“The award recipients are skilled clinicians who are passionate about their profession and the doctor-patient relationship,” said Dr. Sarah Kredentser, President of the CFPC. “Many share their passion, knowledge and skill through teaching and mentoring medical students, working tirelessly to encourage the next generation of family doctors. They are to be commended for their dedication to providing quality health care in the communities they serve.”
“As diverse as they are, the Family Physicians of the Year all share a commitment to reaching out and making family doctors more accessible,” said Dr. Calvin Gutkin, Executive Director and CEO for the CFPC. “They reach out to patients at home and to underserved populations in rural and remote areas. They provide care to immigrants in inner city neighbourhoods, to veterans and the elderly in hospitals and nursing homes, and to penitentiary inmates. They are also active in research, teaching and public health.”
This is the 37th year the College has honoured family physicians with this award. It is named in honour of Dr. Reg L. Perkin, CFPC Executive Director from 1985 to 1996. They are given as part of the annual Family Doctor Week in Canada celebration that this year runs from October 26-31, 2009.
The award presentations will be made during a ceremony at the CFPC’s annual Family Medicine Forum in Calgary on Saturday, October 31. The awards are supported by Merck Frosst Canada Inc., Health Canada and the CFPC’s Research and Education Foundation.
The College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) is the voice of family medicine in Canada. Representing 22,000 members across the country, it is the professional organization responsible for establishing standards for the training, certification and lifelong education of family physicians and for advocating on behalf of the specialty of family medicine, family physicians and their patients. The CFPC accredits postgraduate family medicine training in Canada’s 17 medical schools.
Click here to read the October 28th Winnipeg Free Press story about Dr. Johnson
Posted in: Medicine
February 19th, 2009
Filed under: Medicine
In medicine best patient care is paramount, and, everything depends on having the right information at the right time.
Little wonder than that when Faculty of Medicine dean Dean Sandham was critical care director in Calgary he made information flow his top priority.
“In critical care, to be sure that you are providing the best quality care, you need to have data about what you did,” Sandham said – who you cared for, what treatment was involved, what drugs were used, and so on. Hospitals have always collected that information, the leap Sandham wanted to make was in how it was accessed. Through his efforts as director of critical care he worked to have the information not only digitized but electronically available beside each critical care bed.
Not long after taking Calgary through that innovation, Sandham was on walkabout in Australia and got the call from the University of Manitoba asking him to apply for the dean’s position. He applied, got the job and joined the U of M last year – the latest twist in an interesting career that began on a farm near Coalhurst, Alberta.
Back then the obvious choice for Sandham would have been to go into farming. But there were other influences.
“There was a lot of respect in my family for learning and my elder sisters, who were nine and ten years older than me, had become a nurses and we were all very proud of them for doing that,” Sandham said. As he was growing up, the family also took on the responsibility for caring for his ailing grandfather.
“It was really hard caring for him because we didn’t have the modern conveniences then,” Sandham said. In the end entering medicine became an obvious choice, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t look back.
“Choosing to do one thing means choosing not to do something else. I’ve always thought farming would have been a wonderful way of life and a wonderful way to raise a family.”
And it doesn’t mean he went straight into medicine – Sandham went on his first walkabout in 1960, when he took a year off school to tour and work in New Zealand, Australia and Europe. He returned to start classes in Lethbridge College and move on to the University of Alberta for medical school.
“It was interesting because of the difference in backgrounds,” Sandham said of medical school. “Most of my classmates were from professional families so it was interesting to have that kind of mix and it was also one of the difficult parts.”
After graduation, Sandham spent four years working as a family doctor at a clinic in Red Deer, Alberta – many of his patients were Second World War vets who had their own wealth of experiences to share.
“It was a wonderful experience. I enjoyed every minute of it. It was a clear case of not knowing when I was well off when I left it,” Sandham said. “If I had had any sense I would have stayed there and been retired by now.”
But when he decided to move from running a practice to critical care, he wasn’t thinking about the road to retirement.
“It was clear to me that critical care was a place where you could really really make a difference,” Sandham said. “I was looking for a challenge and an adventure and professional growth.”
He moved to a position with the Calgary General Hospital – with 1,100 beds it was a far cry from the clinic where he had been working. At the time, there was a turf debate at the hospital over which medical director should run the new 31-bed intensive care unit.
In the end they created a new position to run the unit directly and Sandham, straight out of residency, got the job.
“I was 34 and being head of a clinical department I was sitting at the board table with people 20 or 30 years older than me,” Sandham said. “But they were a wonderful group of people, good role models and they taught me a lot about how the hospital worked.”
The trick for Sandham was in finding away to do his job without letting it devour him. He had to set a call schedule that allowed him free time and the occasional statuary holiday off – initially neither goal was met. But eventually, he found that balance and was able to move on with other goals, such as creating a teaching program for residents – a process that began his relationship with the University of Calgary.
He was director of the Calgary General Hospital ICU for nine years before being approached by the rival Foothills Hospitals to run and develop its intensive care unit.
Jumping ship didn’t win him any friends, but it was an opportunity to make a difference by developing the intensive care unit at Foothills Hospital and an academic department of critical care affiliated directly with the University of Calgary. As part of the process, Sandham received MRC research funding and was able to recruit researchers into the program.
But whatever other plans he may have had at Foothills Hospital were interrupted when Alberta went through health “amalgamation” beginning in 1995.
“The process was much more draconian than it was here,” Sandham said. “They closed four of the seven hospitals and blew up the one that gave me my start.”
Sandham’s job after amalgamation was to take the three intensive care units that remained standing and help them work together. As department director he also partnered with the University of Calgary to make critical care an academic department. It was a partnership that allowed him to pursue bringing critical care data right to the patient’s bedside.
And it was not long after, that the U of M came calling. Once again, it was a challenge and a chance to make a difference. He couldn’t’ resist. But this time the focus is on what a faculty can do for its students and people in the community.
Sandham said the mandate of the Faculty of Medicine to the people of Manitoba is to provide healthcare professionals who are “fit for purpose” and prepared to function in today’s world to provide the best possible healthcare.
“This means we must keep the best of our traditional emphasis on knowledge about the human condition, but be the agents for change which helps our profession adapt with new skills that allow us to transfer that knowledge into the best possible care,” Sandham said. These incremental areas of intellectual endeavor in knowledge transfer include understanding process design, quality and safety methods, health informatics and measurement for quality, and interdisciplinary education and practice. This requires a huge cultural shift for healthcare faculties but it is an expectation of the people they serve.
“Our endeavor is supported by the three pillars of medical education are research, education and clinical service,” Sandham said. “The challenge is to bring all three forces in balance in the school.”
The medical school more so than any other faculty at the university relies on a delicate balance of clinician scientists who are training students and conducting research at the university and physicians in the field who work with residents and students to give them the hands on training required in medicine. Part of Sandham’s job is to keep and recruit people for both aspects.
The Faculty of Medicine also has to work together with the other medical research establishments in Winnipeg. Having diverse collection of agencies all focused on research is what gives Winnipeg its strength in the field, Sandham said.
“We’re not in competition with each other but we are in competition other Canadian universities. We can’t out-spend them but we can out-cooperate them.”
On the personal side, Sandham met his wife Joan Jackson while at the University of Alberta – she was training to be a nurse while he was working on being a doctor and they married while students. They have four children and three grandchildren.
Sandham said they’re thrilled to be in Winnipeg.
“Winnipeg is a well kept secret in Canada. It’s a much better place to live and work than people realize.”
In some ways it’s a perfect fit for them – they enjoy canoeing, Sandham hunts and rural Manitoba has plenty of appeal for someone who has never turned his back on an agricultural background.
Posted in: Medicine
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