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Kelowna  

First crop of new doctors

The first medical students to be fully educated and trained in the B.C. Interior are set to graduate from the University of British Columbia this spring.

UBC Okanagan welcomed the inaugural class of the Southern Medical Program in September 2011. Now, as part of the largest medical class in UBC history, these new doctors are preparing to enter residency training in family medicine or various specialties for the next two to five years.

“The past four years have been a great journey for both our students and our program,” says Regional Associate Dean Dr. Allan Jones. “We are incredibly proud of these students who pioneered this program, and proud of the many players — instructors, staff, nurses and many others — who, by enabling their success, are supporting the health-care needs of Interior communities.”

Students in the Southern Medical Program did most of their academic work — lectures, labs and small-group workshops — at UBC Okanagan, and received their clinical training at various hospitals and clinics throughout the Interior.

More than half of the graduates will pursue training in primary care — family medicine, internal medicine or pediatrics. One of them, Alexandra Bond, who grew up in Surrey, will head to Vancouver to begin a five-year residency in internal medicine at UBC.

“On behalf of the Interior Health board as well as our physicians and staff, congratulations to the Southern Medical Program’s first graduating class,” says Interior Health Board Chair Erwin Malzer. “We are proud to play an important role in the future of tomorrow’s doctors, and we look forward to building upon our successful partnership with UBC.”

Bolstered by the Southern Medical Program, UBC will be graduating 292 MD students — its largest class ever — on May 20 at UBC’s Vancouver campus. UBC’s medical education program is now the fifth-largest in North America.


UBC Okanagan will celebrate its first-ever graduating class of medical students today.

Thirty brand-new doctors will begin residency programs across the country as they move on from UBC’s Southern Medical Program in Kelowna.

The graduates will be recognized in a ceremony at the Clinical Academic Campus lecture theatre at Kelowna General Hospital, at 1 p.m.

Regional Associate Dean Dr. Allan Jones and Interior Health board chair Erin Malzer will send them off.

The 30 students, who started their medical training at UBC’s Okanagan campus in September 2011, will now begin two- to five-year residency programs.

The Southern Medical Program admits up to 32 students annually and now, four years into the program, more than 800 Interior-based health professionals are involved in teaching medical students and residents in 30 different communities.

This July, a new family medicine residency site will open at Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital in Trail, and training sites in Kamloops and Kelowna will welcome their second round of residents.

The medical program is delivered in partnership with Interior Health. 



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