Core Family Medicine
Our teaching practices place residents with community-based family physicians. Using this preceptor model, the residents are placed in practices that expose them to the full spectrum of family medicine. In this way residents are exposed to a large number of patients with a wide variety of illnesses in a number of clinical settings (office, hospital, nursing home, house calls, etc.). A resident's patient workload is adjusted as the resident's clinical skills improve and he or she becomes more efficient and effective.
Rural Family Medicine
 In the first year residents will spend 4 weeks in one of the following locations: Arichat, Cheticamp, Eskasoni, Inverness or Neil's Harbour. Cheticamp and Neil's Harbour are coastal fishing communities, located on the world famous Cabot Trail. Both are about 2-1/2 hours drive from Sydney. Also both communities have small 12 to 18 bed hospitals that serve as the medical centre for the surrounding communities. Both of these hospitals are new, having being built in the late 1990's. Both of these facilities contain rooms that can be used by the residents during their stay there. However, most residents prefer to obtain their lodging elsewhere in the communities, away from the hospitals. Inverness is also a coastal fishing community about 2-1/2 hour drive from Sydney. It is located on the South West corner of Cape Breton. It is a relatively larger rural community of aproximately 6000 people served by a 75 bed community hospital.
Arichat is an Acadian community located on the South East coast of Cape Breton about a 90-minute drive from Sydney. This community has no local hospital, but has a busy Community Health Centre. Eskasoni is the largest First Nations Community in the Maritimes. Eskasoni is situated on the Bras d'Or Lake about 45-minutes from Sydney. In Eskasoni there is a large modern Community Health Centre. The Cape Breton Regional Hospital serves as the community hospital for this area. In addition, to looking after admitted patients, there are also a fairly good number of obstetrical deliveries each year. As such residents usually stay in the Sydney area and commute daily to this facility.
Community Family Medicine
In the first year residents have a 4 week rural family medicine rotation in one of the following communities: Arichat, Cheticamp, Eskasono, Inverness, Neil's Harbour. In the second year, residents spend 12 weeks with a community family physician in one of our smaller Maritime communities. Residents may apply to any of these community-teaching practices associated with Dalhousie University. Often our residents will return to the site that they did their 4-week Rural Family Medicine Rotation.
The First and Second Year Training
For first year residents, 3 hours every Thursday afternoon is protected academic time; it is divided into 3 blocks. One hour is devoted to specialty seminars presented on a variety of topics. Another session deals with family medicine specific topics and is generally presented by Family Medicine Faculty. We also present the Problem Based Small Group (PBSGL) Learning modules during this time block are facilitated by a variety of faculty members. Each week one of the residents is also assigned to present a topic to other residents. Late in the fall first year residents are introduced to simulated office oral exams (SOO's).
The second year residents spend 4 continuous rotations in Sydney doing "Academic Family Medicine". During this time they have 2 half-days per week of protected time to work on their projects, audits, self-study and seminars on PGY2 topics. Journal Club in this period concentrates on therapeutics with discussion emphasizing late breaking trials. A lot of time is also spent in mock interviews and exam prep for the SOO's component of the certification exams. |
SYDNEY | CAPE BRETON | NOVA SCOTIA | CANADA