Residency – the final step in medical training
Valerie G. Barnes Connell Jordan
Natalie Tinney, Camille Mutukistna, and Daniel Antonenko are second-year resident doctors working and learning through the medical residency in La Ronge.
Residency is the final step to becoming a doctor, Antonenko said. July 1 is the New Year’s Day for residency students. They were joined by three other first-year residency students this past week.
Tinney is originally from Ottawa, but moved to Peru as a teenager where she completed her medical degree.
Mutukistna and Antonenko, both grew up in Toronto and both completed their university medical degrees in Ireland.
Mutukistna completed an undergraduate degree and spent some time discerning what she wanted to do career-wise, before deciding on medicine, while Antonenko said he couldn’t remember a time he didn’t want to be a doctor.
While Canada requires prospective doctors to complete an undergraduate degree before entering medical school, in both Peru and Ireland, one can enter medical school right from high school.
There were a large number of Canadian students in Ireland. Their class was pretty much half Canadians, which Mutukistna and Antonenko said they found a benefit too because they had much in common with each other.
All three are international medical students who plan to to work in Canada. They are required to do a two-to-five-year residency program. The one in La Ronge runs for two years.
They came to La Ronge to do their residency in Family Medicine.
“Family Medicine is the gateway to the Health Care system,” Tinney said. “[It’s] basically the answer to the needs of the community.”
“You’re an employee and a student at the same time,” Mutukistna added. “You get to see patients on your own always supported from one of our attending doctors.”
Residents get to see patients, explore with them what is happening and come up with a solution. To begin with, they work with the attending physician on their analysis of the situation and “just slowly you become more independent,” she said.
Tinney spoke about how wide the experience is in La Ronge, compared to urban settings.
Patients are often referred to specialists in an urban setting, while “We’re trained to be a one-stop shop.
“The variety here – in one afternoon you can remove a ingrown toenail, do prenatal care, and also do mental health counselling and check out a newborn. Our preceptors teach us to be self-sufficient, but not to the point of doing things we don’t have skills in. We are trained to serve the needs of the community. That is one of the most satisfying things of this job in La Ronge.”
They also get to travel when doctors travel into other communities and participate in clinics.
“The ones that are student-led is where we learn the most,” Tinney said. “Being able to enter people’s homes and see them there is unique to our program.”
As a person from an urban setting, Tinney said, an important thing for her has been, seeing how the their symptoms as people in a rural setting are connected to the environment around them.
“If a person comes in and says, ‘I need you to fix my shoulder cause I can’t row with this shoulder.’ It’s so fascinating to hear how their symptoms directly impact their relationship with the community and with nature. For me, that’s taught me so much more than I could read in a textbook.”
Because of the number of doctors practicing in La Ronge, the Residents have access to a wide variety of knowledge and experience as well.
Getting into a residency program and getting situated is a bit complex, Antonenko said.
Each university has a program. A student is asked to prioritise a list of programs available that interest them, and the university also does the same.
“It’s a kind of matching process.”
