A Taste of Small Town Medicine During ROMP Week

The Rural Ontario Medical Program (ROMP) Week commenced Monday, June 3, with family medicine elective scheduled for June 6.

PETERBOROUGH, ON – ROMP Week is in full swing as first-year medical students jaunt through Peterborough’s medical community to experience the different areas of healthcare. Today, the rural learners accompany family physicians to understand their important role in the frontier of medicine.

ROMP, or Rural Ontario Medical Program, works with six medical universities in Ontario to support the new learners by coordinating their placements in rural areas of the province. The students immerse themselves into these small communities to gain valuable insights into the healthcare needs and dynamics of the unique populations.

Dr. Frank Gifford is a family physician within The Medical Centre Family Health Organization and the ROMP Lead for the Peterborough area. Dr. Gifford explains his role as essentially being there to help advocate and liaise for teaching opportunities for medical learners in Peterborough and the surrounding area. Additionally, Dr. Gifford is a ROMP preceptor and welcomes medical students to his practice to show them and train them in primary care medicine and give them the opportunity to see what Peterborough has to offer.

When questioned about the primary care crisis, Dr. Gifford expressed that there are many challenges that family physicians are facing.

“There are a number of challenges that family physicians are facing in Ontario and certainly these challenges are amplified in rural settings,” Dr. Gifford said. “We are certainly in the middle of a primary care crisis at this point where access to a family physician has never been harder for the general public. Ultimately, I think family medicine in general feels to be under resourced at the current time. There are also waves of attrition with more doctors’ choosing to retire.”

Isabella Miklaucic is a medical student from the University of Ottawa and is currently partaking in ROMP. She explained that ROMP week is appealing as it provides students with the opportunity to see what it’s like to practise medicine in a community centre in rural areas as opposed to academic centres.

“As a first year medical student, I am keeping an open mind as to what specialty I want to go into,” says Miklaucic, when asked about her future plans. “I do think that family medicine could become more appealing than it currently is over the next few years if we saw some changes in terms of more support and resources being provided to family physicians so it seems like a more sustainable area of medicine for physicians.”

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