Chair's Message – Congratulations Graduates
This month marks the end of the academic year on June 30, 2021 and the graduation of another class of PGY2 and PGY3 family medicine residents, now ready to start their practices.
What a remarkable time to be training as a family medicine resident with all the disruptions of the COVID-19 Pandemic! During their training there was a dramatic and sudden shift to mainly virtual care for patients and not only in family medicine practices.
Such incredible to practice left us all wondering about the quality of our patient care and the quality of our teaching and supervision. I am sure the family medicine residents also wondered about this. Did we see enough patients, enough clinical situations, and do we have the confidence to now start up our own practices ?
I have been immensely impressed with the family medicine residents that I have seen and how they have responded to the pandemic. They have been very flexible and adaptable, readily shifting gears to the new care environment while still available to see acutely ill patients when necessary. Residents have also responded without complaint when there was a need to re-deploy within the hospital setting to meet a clinical need.
In my view the family medicine residents have demonstrated strength in adversity, adaptability and have found new skills in virtual care and patient-centred communication.
Family medicine graduates, I am not worried about your competence. You will respond skillfully to whatever patient care challenges await you. The road ahead is wide open for you.
This is the last Chair’s message until September. I hope you all can have a break this summer, recharge and come back ready to face the next challenges. As always, I am open to your comments and suggestions, swetmore@uwo.ca or @DOCSJW
