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10 Repairing the damage An instructor exposes students to the country 2 he fled Nº 2014 18 Brain change 10 Can a curriculum alter kids’ neurons? VOL FALL 20 Chuck Fipke’s passion for exploration First for diamonds, now MEDICINE for an Alzheimer’s cure THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA FACULTY OF MEDICINE THE MEDICINE MAN HOW UBC PUT JAMES CARD ON THE ROAD NORTH, TO A TOWN THAT DESPERATELY NEEDED HIM A centesimal 14 celebration “IF YOU KEEP HATING, IT EATS AWAY AT YOU” 10 CONTENTS 01 Message from the Vice 16 Investigations + Breakthroughs Provost Health and Dean 18 Brain change: Can a curriculum Chuck Fipke’s 02 The Medicine Man: A distributed alter kids’ neurons? passion for education success story 20 Chuck Fipke’s passion for 20 exploration 06 “You Can’t Do That”: How exploration – first for diamonds, UBC’s innovation was emulated now for an Alzheimer’s cure across Canada, and overseas 22 A vision for the Downtown 08 Problem. Response. Outcomes. Eastside: Better eyesight 10 years of distributed medical 23 A donor finds inspiration across A donor finds education a crowded room inspiration, 10 Repairing the damage: An 24 Chew Wei and Tak Mak: Two 23 across a instructor exposes students to immigrants linked by their the country he fled crowded room contributions to Canadian health 13 Speech-language pathology 25 Medical Alumni News prepares for a big jump 14 A centesimal celebration: Midwifery and Genetic Counselling graduate their 100th students UBC MEDICINE VOL. 10 | NO. 2 Fall 2014 A publication of the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine, providing news and information for and about faculty members, students, staff, alumni and friends. Letters and suggestions are welcome. Contact Brian Kladko at [email protected]. Address corrections: [email protected] Editor/Writer Brian Kladko Contributing writers Carrie West, Heather Amos Design Signals Design Group Inc. www.signals.ca Online at med.ubc.ca/ubc-medicine-magazine MESSAGE FROM THE VICE PROVOST HEALTH AND DEAN Creating our system of distributed converted into true collaborative medical education and post-graduate partnerships. This requires a common training required painstaking commitment to a goal that is more planning, intense teamwork, and important than any single institution significant funding – all of it aimed or entity. toward attracting a more diverse, We have not only shown ourselves community-oriented array of capable of forging such partnerships; students, and encouraging them to we have begun to raise the stakes by pursue their careers in places where planning an academic health sciences they are most needed. network in B.C. Under such a system, Along the way, I’ve come to the questions and challenges that appreciate the importance of arise at clinical sites throughout the Every summer, my wife establishing, nurturing and province will become part of our Janet and I, along with our maintaining relationships. And there research enterprise, and the findings dogs, embark on a journey were many relationships – with two will be systematically disseminated to a different part of the ministries, three universities, six health to everyone in the network. To build province, checking in with authorities, scores of communities and such a network from scratch, based my far-flung network of thousands of clinical colleagues. on our pre-2004 landscape, would colleagues — educators, My appreciation of these have been a fool’s errand. Now, with researchers, students and relationships didn’t always come the partnerships that grew out of our staff. And every summer I easy. I remember spending way distributed education system, return with a story or two. too much time discussing future it seems like a natural next step in letterheads or logos with colleagues our evolution. at the University of Victoria. If I could In the meantime, let’s take a have done it over again, I would have moment to revel in what we have ’ve seen a bear steal a pig torso from suggested that we all take a walk already accomplished – a system that a barbeque in Port McNeil, gotten a around Victoria Harbour to talk about is far more attuned and responsive “flashing lights” police escort to the other things – anything other than the to the needs of the population. home of another faculty member in project at hand. We needed to build a Examples of our success abound, and I Fort St. John, been presented with a relationship, and discussions of font to chronicle all of them in these pages Chilliwack “prize pack” (a dozen cobs size are hardly a solid foundation for of UBC Medicine magazine would be of corn, a crate of blueberries and a doing that; decisions about details can impossible. So we’ve created a special fresh coho salmon), and been startled almost always wait. First, we had to website, www.bcmd10.med.ubc.ca, to find a pair of chickens strutting get to know and trust each other. that delves into the history and many around our hotel room in Stewart. That’s why I go on those annual dimensions of our achievement. In A decade ago, there really wasn’t pilgrimages throughout the province, these pages, meanwhile, we focus on much reason for the Dean of the UBC where I let people show me the local the story of one student, James Card, Faculty of Medicine to be in those issues and attractions. Most of my of the Northern Medical Program’s remote parts of the province, other time on that trip is spent listening, first graduating class, and his service than for pure leisure. But I needed because I have come to appreciate to one town, Mackenzie. to check in with members of our that you never learn anything with Spoiler alert: It’s a happy ending. team – a team that is now, after 10 your mouth open. years, emerging from a remarkable, But I’ve also realized that whether Gavin C.E. Stuart, MD, FRCSC Vice Provost Health sometimes bumpy childhood, on its we are talking about education or Dean, Faculty of Medicine way to what I hope will be a sure-footed research, relationships themselves but continually innovating maturity. are insufficient unless they are 1 THE MEDICINE MAN HOW UBC PUT JAMES CARD ON THE ROAD NORTH, TO A TOWN THAT DESPERATELY NEEDED HIM James Card Photo by Tanya Peterson UBC MEDICINE Fall 2014 2 COVER STORY decade ago, Mackenzie – a mill town about the region’s chronic physician After earning his medical degree nestled in the Rocky Mountain Trench, shortage. in 2008, Dr. Card remained in Prince at the southern end of Williston Lake Then help arrived, in the person of a George for a two-year residency – seemed to have its health care needs quiet, young man named James Card. in family medicine – a program OA well in hand, with four physicians And then it kept on coming. established about a decade before tending patients at the hospital and the Northern Medical Program. By health centre. And then, in the words e grew up in Maple Ridge, 2010, he had become one of the first of Barbara Crook, the district’s health but felt more at home in B.C.’s fully-licensed physicians to emerge services administrator, “it all seemed H rugged back country than from UBC’s distributed education to melt away.” he did in the suburbs of the Lower program. (Residencies for other One by one, the doctors – all Mainland. Becoming a doctor wasn’t specialties typically take five years, so transplants from South Africa – packed in his plan, even after graduating from many of his classmates spent several up and left. A husband-and-wife team university. more years in training.) returned to their homeland; the other Instead, he took a job planting Dr. Card stayed in the North, two, perhaps feeling overburdened by trees in the north. And it was during without quite settling down. He the resulting workload, left for Alberta. one of those outings, not too far from pursued a variety of locums (temporary Crook scrambled to fill the gaps Mackenzie, that news came over the assignments) around the province, with physicians on the locum circuit. radio about the rally in Prince George. filling in for doctors on vacation or The best she could usually manage “That’s when the seed started to maternity leave. He spent most of his was getting a physician to stay for a set,” he recalls. “It was not something I time in Prince George, but also did year. Patients became accustomed had grown up wanting to do, but I saw stints in his hometown of Maple Ridge, to being treated by a new doctor the opportunity.” the bustling maternity ward of Surrey each time they visited, eliminating When the time came to act on his Memorial Hospital, and a small town much hope for continuity of care. At idea, the rally had borne fruit – in 2004, he knew well from his tree-planting one point, the 24-hour emergency UBC’s medical education program days: Mackenzie. room had to shut down for two days. began its expansion beyond the Lower “For people who like the outdoors, Supervisors at the town’s mills knew Mainland, taking root in Prince George Mackenzie is fantastic,” Dr. Card says. that if one of their employees had a and Victoria. By distributing doctor “Incredible lakes, hiking, boating, serious injury, the ambulance would training throughout the province, the fishing, skiing. And I enjoyed the type bypass the hospital and head straight thinking went, more doctors would be of work.” down Highway 97 to Prince George, a likely to practice medicine throughout When news of an opening there two-hour drive south.