Medical Education Ripe for Change: SFU Medicine seizes opportunity to positively impact primary care in B.C.
Simon Fraser University’s new School of Medicine aims to improve equity, access and primary care in B.C.’s healthcare system, while leveraging its best and brightest researchers, professors, mentors and innovators.
In pursuit of a more collaborative, community-oriented pathway through medical education and into the workforce, planning for the School began in 2021.
Central pillars of its mission include a focus on training primary care physicians in, with and for communities; increasing equity and access; advancing team-based care, and transforming the current healthcare system structure by training future physicians as catalysts for change.
“There are lots of great innovators, researchers and people who want to do things better at SFU,” said SFU Faculty of Biomedical Physiology researcher Dr. Steve Reynolds. “By having a medical school embedded in the university, it provides that opportunity for closer collaboration with the larger healthcare community.”
A practicing ICU physician at the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster and a double-specialist in infectious diseases and critical care, Dr. Reynolds became an entrepreneur in medical device innovation in recent years, looking for ways to use technological advances to solve sophisticated medical problems that he faced every day.
Through his entrepreneurial experiences, he learned the importance of adapting medical education to new learning methodologies and technologies, rather than relying on traditional models.
Dr. Steven Reynolds, researcher at Department of Biomedical Physiology at Faculty of Science.
"The secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient."
---Dr. Francis Peabody as quoted by Dr. Reynolds
Current education systems need to become more responsive to students’ learning styles today, incorporating rapidly-changing technologies, and simultaneously avoiding outdated models that waste time and resources, he asserts.
“This new medical school presents an opportunity to modernize the learning process,” he said. “The next generation needs to be able to navigate these [challenges] and to be able to think of medicine differently – we don't have to do medicine the way we've always done medicine; we have to be creative, we have to find the space to innovate.”
Professor Lindsay Hedden from the Faculty of Health Sciences.
An assistant professor in SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences, Lindsay Hedden is an applied health services researcher with a deep passion for improving primary health care, workforce challenges, equity, and the overall sustainability of B.C.’s primary healthcare system.
With its focus on increasing the number of physicians in community practice, improving access and equity in primary care, as well as a commitment to fostering team-based care, she said the new medical school is an important step toward improving health outcomes in B.C.
“There is a real focus on the importance of team-based primary care,” she said. “Advancing primary care as such a critical and worthwhile career choice will combat some of the existing narratives that we see in other medical schools.”
It is also an important step in providing opportunities for new graduates to work in team-based care models, in which new doctors have the opportunity to work with nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, and pharmacists, she said.
“Our research has shown that graduates who have been taught about team-based care want to jump into an existing care model,” she said. “They want to be responsible for providing high-quality, clinical care for their patients, without having to manage [a] clinic itself. There are very few opportunities in our current system to facilitate that.”
“The health care systems that place a broader emphasis on primary care serve their populations better,”
---Prof. Lindsay Hedden
Everything she does touches on issues of primary care access and equity, she said, which is the foundation of our health care system.
“The health care systems that place a broader emphasis on primary care serve their populations better,” she said. “Their populations are healthier, and they have better health equity outcomes. It’s just such a critical part of the health care system.”
Similarly, Dr. Reynolds sees the new medical school as a valuable opportunity, given that its mission is aligned with his core passion of adaptation and innovation in medical education, ultimately redefining the healthcare system to better serve the community.
He acknowledges that practicing medicine is a difficult career path to take while pointing out the unique privilege of it.
“You’re dealing with people that are suffering,” he said. “It's a challenge, but it is an immense privilege. You have an opportunity to help people in ways that you could never help them otherwise, at a time when they so desperately need help.”
The school’s prospective students and its graduates will be given that opportunity, along with a chance to seize a moment at which medical education is changing, with AI and new technologies.
“I’m excited about SFU’s new medical school because I do think that there is a future in medicine, and a satisfying role and position and potential for prospective students,” said Dr. Reynolds. "[Technology is] going to change the way that we communicate and capture information, and when done right it has the opportunity to bring us back to the core of medicine and healing.”