Brandon Satellite Residency Campus reaches 10-year milestone in 2023

Prairie Mountain Health (PMH) continues its strong partnerships with two University of Manitoba residency programs located within the health region. The Brandon Satellite Campus, along with the Parkland Family Medicine Residency Unit, based in Dauphin, has provided exceptional opportunities for physicians to train in rural settings and has further increased the number of physicians who continue to practice in rural and more remote communities.

In 2013, the University of Manitoba (UM) established the Brandon Satellite Campus, designed to expand the postgraduate training of physicians to recruit more doctors to rural Manitoba. Two years later, with mounting success, UM expanded the initiative with enhanced programs for emergency medicine, psychiatry and an anesthesia program. In 2017, another expansion allowed students to take their third year of medical school in Brandon.

Dr. Joanne Maier is the Associate Dean of the UM Max Rady College of Medicine’s Brandon Satellite Campus. Dr. Maier succeeded Dr. Charles Penner, who moved on to other opportunities last July. Dr. Maier says the residency program continues to play a prominent role in the region and province and has enjoyed tremendous support.

“It is great to see most of the physicians involved in precepting and teaching and the programs increasing,” Maier said. “Also, it’s wonderful to see so many graduates working in Brandon and rural Manitoba! It really has made a difference for recruitment and retention.”

Dr. Maier says several exciting programs have developed over time that the Brandon Satellite Campus is pleased to highlight.

“Three programs— two postgraduate and one undergraduate— have been developed that are based almost entirely in Brandon. This includes a two-year family medicine residency, a five-year psychiatry residency and a one-year longitudinal clerkship (third year of medical school with clinical rotations). There is a hybrid program (postgraduate) for a five-year anesthesia residency, which includes a portion of the training in Brandon. And, we have many visiting medical students, residents and physician assistant trainees doing a variety of rotations here throughout the year.”

Across the province and country, recruitment and retention of health-care providers remain top of mind, including the ongoing challenge of finding more doctors for rural areas. Looking back on Brandon Satellite Campus over the past 10 years, the tongue-in-cheek reference of ‘grow your own’ has taken on even greater significance.

“We know there are factors associated with the increased probability of physicians choosing to practice in rural and remote communities, some of which include rural upbringing, positive undergraduate rural exposure, postgraduate exposure outside of urban areas and stated intent/preference for general or family practice primary care,” Maier stated.

“The main purpose of developing a satellite campus here was to improve recruitment and retention by training rurally, which has been effective. Many of the graduates from Brandon family medicine and Brandon family medicine/emergency medicine enhanced skills training have remained in Brandon or rural Manitoba. Many of the graduated physicians working here are from Brandon or the area. And, the other programs based here are now starting to have residents that are graduating.”

Maier says physician preceptors and PMH continue to be very supportive of the medical residents, medical students and UM Brandon Satellite Campus. PMH CEO Brian Schoonbaert says the health region has a lot to offer and regularly touches base with residents within the residency programs.

“We always say, come and enjoy, or continue to enjoy, our ‘good nature’! For health-care professionals, this applies to living and working in rural Manitoba. We really don’t have to sell the benefits of living in our region if residents are from rural areas; they already know how special it is. But we do have to continue to promote the diverse practice opportunities that exist region-wide, from family practice to specialized positions. We remain committed to continuing that,”

Maier says the campus initiative continues to evolve, and there is an opportunity to develop more rural training positions in family medicine, enhanced skills in emergency medicine/family medicine, psychiatry and anesthesia in a sustainable way.

“Other generalist specialty rural training is needed and being explored. These will all require the appropriate funding from government, support from the respective University of Manitoba departments, support from PMH, training, retention and recruitment of preceptors here and adequate infrastructure.”

Maier says UM is developing new and strengthening current partnerships between other Rady Faculty of Health Sciences’ colleges (dentistry, rehabilitation sciences, pharmacy and nursing) and the respective Brandon departments, moves she adds, can only benefit the city and region.

“There’s a need to increase physician resources for rural PMH communities, including First Nations communities in the area and training family medicine residents in these communities may improve this.”

Looking ahead, Dr. Maier says partnerships have been and will continue to be, critical to developing programs at the Brandon Satellite Campus.

“There are many stakeholders involved in the success of this distributed campus, including UM, PMH, Brandon Regional Health Centre, the many departments and physicians in Brandon and the health region, all of the interprofessional team members, our administrative team, Sioux Valley High School and the provincial government.”

Photo credits: Sandy Black, for UM Brandon Satellite Campus.

Get Better Together – is it for you?

Do you try and set goals and can’t seem to follow through with them? Is your list of things you should be doing just getting longer? Sometimes it can be overwhelming to think about the changes we want to make or the activities we want to accomplish. The list seems too big to work on all at once, making it difficult to start.

Setting yourself goals or learning how to create action plans that will help you achieve those goals is an important part of life. Making action plans allows us to break down our activities into smaller, more doable steps.

When deciding on an Action Plan, there are a few key things you need to consider for it to succeed:

• First and foremost, the action you are planning needs to be something YOU want to do or have decided to do. Not something someone else thinks you should do.
• Second, make sure that the action you have chosen is ACHIEVABLE. If you are new to action planning, it’s a good idea to start with something that can be achieved within the next week.
• Third, make sure the action you have decided on is ACTION-SPECIFIC. For example, losing weight is not action-specific; it’s a result of an action. Reducing the amount of sugar-sweetened beverages from 6 to 3 in a week is action specific.

Next, you need to answer the following questions:

• What? What are you going to do (specific action)
• How much? This is measuring the time, distance or amount
• When? Which day of the week or time of the day works best to complete the action
• How often? This is the number of times you will carry out the activity in a week. When thinking about this one, try to avoid saying every day. Things come up, and plans change. It is better to underestimate and feel like you’ve succeeded if you do more than planned than to feel like you’ve failed if you don’t reach your lofty goals.

The final step to creating a successful action plan

Rate your confidence level on a scale of 0-10. 0 being not at all confident I can achieve this, and 10 being totally sure and confident the plan will be fully completed. It is recommended that if your confidence level is below 7, you should have a look at what barriers are preventing you from feeling more confident and consider reworking the action plan. Setting realistic and achievable action plans is key to becoming a better self-manager. It’s important that you succeed!

Action planning is one of the many skills discussed and practiced in the Get Better Together program and is seen as the most important self-management tool. If you are living with a chronic health condition and want to learn more about becoming a better self-manager, consider signing up for this program. Participants will work to build the confidence needed to better manage their health through group support and discussion of topics such as healthy eating, physical activity, communication and pain management. This program is offered both in-person and virtual across PMH.

For more information, please contact Roslyn Cullen at [email protected] or call our Health Promotion toll-fee line at 1-877-509-7852.

(Information for this article was taken from The Chronic Disease Self-Management Workshop developed by The Self-Management Resource Center – Stanford University.)

Brandon Regional Health Centre (BRHC) expansion project continues with the foundation work of the new building located on the north side of BRHC.

Pile driving of posts into the ground close to the Brandon Regional Health Centre’s existing wall will start to take place. This will require temporary changes inside the hospital where the NICU and Maternity Ward are located.

Effective February 1, the NICU will be moved to 200 Surgery (2nd floor). Depending on the location of piling driving, some maternity patients may also be transferred to 200 surgery after they deliver. Patients moved may have to share a room with other moms.

Visitation in the NICU may be limited to one person per baby due to space.

When visiting, we also ask you to check at the front information desk before going to the Maternity Unit to ensure your family member has not been moved to 200 Surgery.

These moves are necessary due to the noise and vibration levels of the pile driving. This work is expected to be completed in mid-March.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding during the construction phase.