Kelowna

The Interior’s new clinical teaching building at Kelowna General Hospital — the home of the Southern Medical Program — is complete and ready to begin training doctors in the Southern Interior for the first time ever, announced Premier Gordon Campbell Monday.

“Since 2001 we have worked to expand doctor training across the province, from Vancouver Island to the North and now to the Interior with the opening of the new clinical academic campus at Kelowna General Hospital,” says Campbell.

“Since 2001 we’ve doubled the number of medical training spaces in B.C. from 128 to 256. When the Southern Medical Program officially opens in 2011, the number will rise to 288 and future doctors will be able to study for the first time here in the Southern Interior, in a new, world-class learning facility.”

The new building is located on the grounds at KGH, and is a 34,000-square-foot standalone facility (including a multi-level parkade), which includes a 180-seat lecture theatre, and a library created for both hospital and academic use, plus videoconferencing suites and clinical skills and resource rooms for medical undergraduates and post-graduate residents.

Up to 40 medical students are expected to begin using the campus immediately, including residents in family medicine and specialty training as well as postgraduate rural family medicine students.

Construction on the building began in November 2008, and was completed on time and on budget in December 2009.

The KGH library is now open and postgraduate residents in the UBC Faculty of Medicine’s Family Practice Residency Program. as well as UBC faculty and stall are already using the building.

Undergraduate students in the Southern Medical Program will begin training in the Clinical Academic Campus in January 2012, one semester after they begin their studies.

“We’re thrilled to have this new medical program campus here at KGH,” says Interior Health board chair Norman Embree. “The Southern Interior is growing rapidly, and by bringing medical training to the region we will be able to attract even more high quality medical professionals to Kelowna and the Interior.”

When it opens to students in 2011, the Southern Medical Program will be the fourth academic campus of the UBC Faculty of Medicine.

The others are the Point Grey UBC campus in Vancouver, the Island Medical Program at the University of Victoria and the Northern Medical Program at the University of Northern British Columbia.