Jeanine McColl, MPT'09

Jeanine McColl, MPT’09

While in school at UBC, Jeanine McColl, MPT’09 completed an interdisciplinary rural placement program which had a lasting impact on her future work and volunteer efforts. She traveled to Port McNeil for the placement with UBC students from medicine, nursing, and physical therapy, with the goal of learning the nuances of practice in their chosen fields in a rural setting.

Taking what she learned in her rural placement in Canada, Jeanine was interested in applying her knowledge, skills and experience internationally. In 2011, she went on her first international volunteer trip and traveled to Kenya for three weeks with Free the Children.

After this initial trip she got involved with Broken Earth, a medical aid project which was founded in Newfoundland, by orthopedic surgeon Dr. Andrew Furey. Broken Earth is a foundation that establishes volunteer teams composed of physicians, nurses, and physiotherapists from across Canada who travel to Haiti to support the relief effort and restore strength and hope to the Haitian people by providing highly skilled medical services. It has been three years since the devastating 2010 earthquake and the country is still recovering. Broken Earth is a joint venture with Project Medishare, which is an initiative from the University of Miami. Project Medishare has built a hospital in Haiti, which relies on international teams of physicians to help staff and support its daily operation.

Hospital Bernard Mevs in Port au Prince is a trauma centre and the only hospital that provides critical care in the country. The hospital is currently staffed with around 75% Haitian staff, and 25% international volunteers. Project Medishare’s goal is to teach and support local health care professionals to the point of total self- sufficiency in the future.

On each assignment McColl provides any physical rehabilitation care that is required for patients at the 50 bed hospital. Haiti currently has very few local Physical Therapists and with a national population of over 10 million, the need for qualified personnel is high.

Lack of resources including equipment, power, rooms, medication, follow up services, etc., are just as much an issue as lack of highly skilled staff. An entire class of graduating nursing students was lost because of the earthquake that demolished their school. The hospital has only two x-ray machines and there are no technicians in the country to repair them. If one must be serviced, someone must be flown in additional expense.

Looking forward, McColl would like to continue her international work and perhaps start a global health organization. She is currently training to complete a 143km bike ride in support of Project Stitch Haiti, an organization that teaches individuals with spinal cord injuries and amputees how to sew as a means to support their families. Among many beautiful items, they produce uniforms necessary for children to attend school. Their contributions to the community through the program help them gain self-esteem and earn respect, overcoming the significant existing stigma associated with being disabled in Haitian society. To support this life changing initiative please go to www.projectstitch.org

Recently, Jeanine was in Cuenca, Ecuador where she provided post-operative orthopedic care. She is planning to return with a medical team to Haiti this fall. She can be contacted at jeanine.mccoll@gmail.com with any questions.

Albert Cox, MD’54 & Margaret Cox, MD’55

Albert (Al) Cox, MD l954, first met Margaret (Peg) Dobson in the microscopic anatomy class. Students were seated alphabetically so the only obstacle keeping Al apart from his future wife was one classmate named Peter Devito. Pete eventually switched seats with Al, as he got tired of being in the crossfire of conversation over his microscope!

Al asked Peg for their first date while they were in the gross anatomy lab – unusual but not exactly a romantic setting! Over the following years they went out together and also studied together, often walking home along University Boulevard. During summer vacations Al lived at home in Victoria while working as a house painter and taxi driver, while Peg worked as a nurse aide and later a lab assistant at what is now Riverdale Hospital in Coquitlam, and later at the lab of the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria.

They married in May 1954 and pursued postgraduate study and jobs in Vancouver,

London England, Seattle, Salt Lake City and St John’s, spending 22 years in Newfoundland and Labrador, where Al was Professor of Medicine at the new Medical School of Memorial University and later Dean. Peg practiced pediatrics at the Janeway Child Health Centre and the university while the family of four was growing up. They retired to Vancouver Island in l991 where Al established an organic garlic farm. They shared their 57^th wedding anniversary with the 57^th

class reunion this year.

-Submitted by Al Cox, MD’54 & Margaret Cox, MD’55

Storm the Wall!

For more than 30 years, Storm the Wall has been an iconic event on the Point Grey campus. Now UBC REC and Alumni Affairs invite you to re-live the experience of scaling a 12 foot wall with four of your friends. Legs of the relay race include a swim, sprint, bike and run all followed by the challenge of getting your team up and over the wall.

We know it may have been a few years since you last stormed the wall or perhaps you missed out on the Storm the Wall experience as an undergrad…Not to worry, You’ll have help along the way and at the walls to make sure you get over.

To take part of these alumni races, your team of 5 must have at least 3 UBC alumni.

Event Details

Sunday, March 24, 2013
9:00 – 1:30 pm

Registration: 9:00 – 9:30 am in the Student Union Building Party Room
Wall Training Clinic: 9:30 – 10:30 am
Storm the Wall Alumni Races: 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Casual Lunch: 12:00 – 1:15 pm in the Student Union Building Party Room

Team Composition

5 people are needed to race; however, it is recommended that teams have 6 people on their team roster when they register.

Men’s Teams – all participants should be men; however any combination of men and women is allowed to race in this category
Women’s Teams – all participants must be women
Co-ed Teams – all Co-ed teams must have a minimum of 2 women race, otherwise they will be deemed to be a Men’s Team

Attire and Equipment

All racers: Dress in layers. The event will have both indoor and outdoor components, so you may need to remove or add clothing during the event.

Swimmer: Please arrive with your swimsuit on underneath your clothing. There will be a changeroom; however, there is limited time to change before your race.

Runners, wall persons: Appropriate attire for racing includes: running shoes, shorts, jogging pants, track pants, t-shirt, sweatshirt.

Cyclists: Helmet and bike required (rentals available upon request). Appropriate cycling clothing and cycling shoes are suggested, if available. Please note, that you will not be allowed to climb the walls with your cycling shoes, so bringing an extra pair of running shoes is advised.

No Bike? No Worries! UBC REC will have a select number of bikes available for use at Storm the Wall. Please send an email to storm@rec.ubc.ca to request a bike reservation. You will be notified whether there is a bike (and helmet if needed) available for your race.

Please include your:

First and last name
Heat day and time
Phone number
Whether or not you need a helmet

Click here to Register Today!

Registration is $82 per team. Register by Wednesday, March 13.

Join us March 20th, 6:30-9:00pm

Presented in partnership with the Faculty of Medicine

Nobody wants to think about, let alone discuss, the idea of dying or being critically or chronically ill. However, it’s precisely in these situations that you or your loved ones will have so many questions and not enough time.

What’s the difference between palliative care, hospices, nursing homes, and long term care? How does the system make admittance decisions?
What does DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) or “extreme measures” really cover and what other situations should be considered?
How much authority does a family member have when the patient cannot speak for themselves?
How do you ensure your organ donation wishes are carried out? Would your organs ever be refused? How common are living donations?
What happens if I don’t have a will? What is a living will and what does it cover?

Join us as our panel of experts offer advice and perspectives on these matters and more. We all need to think about these issues, while time is still on our side.

Event Details

Wednesday, March 20, 2013
6:30 – 9:00 pm

6:30 pm – Program
8:00 pm – Light reception and no-host bar

Performance Works
1218 Cartwright St
Vancouver, BC, V6H 3R8 – map

To RSVP for this event please click here

Nicholas Carr, MD’83 & Frances Jang, MD’83

Frances Jang sat at the back of the lecture hall and Nicholas Carr sat at the front—he hadn’t yet realized he needed glasses—so the young medical students didn’t meet until they were paired for a doubles round-robin tennis tournament in third year.

Nick’s impaired vision didn’t hinder his tennis or his attraction to Frances. The righty-lefty team was competitive on the court, which caught Frances’ attention, as did Nick’s wit.

Their first date was seeing the movie Chariots of Fire with a friend, and before long they were sitting together at the front of the lecture hall, studying together and discussing whether to intern in the same place.

“It was the most intense and least private romance you can imagine,” says Dr. Jang. “Our classmates wanted to know all the ups and downs.”

While on a surgical elective in Kenya, Nick received a postcard with the wedding date from his well-organized fiancée back in Vancouver. The couple was married shortly before graduation and honeymooned on a two-week kayak camping trip in Haida Gwaii.

As interns in Toronto, they lived in residence on the hospital grounds, each sleeping in scrubs with a pager on an arm of the pull-out couch. Their careers evolved together and became complementary. Dr. Carr went into plastic surgery and is currently the Head of the Division of Plastic Surgery at UBC, and Dr. Jang became a dermatologist. They share a private cosmetic medical clinic in Vancouver called Skinworks.

Soon to celebrate their 30^th wedding anniversary, the couple has three children—all who want to be doctors.

“They see how much we love what we do,” says Dr. Carr.

Marion (Cowley), MD’59 & Roger Rogers, MD’59

It was in the early days of Med school and we were all contemplating the fascinating prospect of dissecting our first cadaver. We hadn’t even had our first spot quiz yet when we moved breathlessly from one 60-second ID subject to another. What will happen if this structure is cut? Good heavens! Is it a nerve or a vessel? If the former, where has it come from and where is it going? Is this exposed square inch an arm or a leg? I suppose if it’s a vessel the answer is it will bleed – too easy. Must be a nerve. Maybe if I ease the coversheet down a bit I can see…Boing! “Move on please. Your minute is up.”

It was a relief to be given a pile of (plastic) bones so we could learn to identify attachment spots, tendon grooves, vessel entry points and where the darn things fit together. I was sitting on one of the cabinets, glad not to be bending over a cadaver, when a fellow student–a chap I’d never really met but I thought was named Roger – came over with a femur clamped firmly between his jaws. He looked at me hopefully (lovely blue eyes he had) and actually wagged his tail like any good retriever waiting for a drop order. I fear the thoughts that went through my mind were, “What on earth is this nut doing here? Surely the admissions committee could do a better job than this! What were they thinking?!” Then he gave a small whimper and dropped the wretched bone in my lap! My classmates were laughing at us both. No doubt my incredulous expression was ample cause for mirth, but I was actually quite intrigued. He wagged his tail and walked away, a bit sadly I thought.

A year later, when Roger sat in front of me in Path class, I discovered he could wriggle his ears in a most distracting way! I almost failed pathology but knew this young man was worth a look. The next year, by then one of only four girls in the class, I was slotted with a female classmate, away from my usual alphabetical placing with the Cs and into the R clinical group with Roger. It was a real romance by then and a year later – in 1959 – we graduated together as an engaged couple.

In June of 1960 we were married and remained so for fifty years, until death did us part in 2011.

*Written by: Dr. Marion Rogers

Donald MacRitchie, MD’70, BSc’68 & Elizabeth MacRitchie, BScR’70

After three years of nothing but studying medicine, Donald MacRitchie recognized his future stood to benefit from some social breaks. In September of fourth-year medicine, he went to Queen Elizabeth Theatre to buy a pair of season’s tickets to the popular travelling Broadway shows of the day— and this particular time Auntie Mame was being performed.

“I had the tickets burning in my pocket – I had to get a date,” says Donald.

So he went to the fall mixer at the post-war hut on the site of today’s William A. Webber Medical Student & Alumni Centre (MSAC), where he danced with a physical therapy student known as Libby Coton.

“I love musical theatre,” says Elizabeth (Libby). “When he invited me out it was just perfect. I couldn’t think of a better date.”

Coincidently, both Donald and Elizabeth were accepted to internships in Montreal starting that summer. Donald proposed to Elizabeth in January, and they were married in Vancouver the following September.

“I knew she was the woman I wished to spend the rest of my life with, so why beat around the bush?” says Donald.

The couple returned to Montreal in the fall, and within weeks of their wedding they lived through the 1970 October Crisis triggered by the FLQ and the invoking of the War Measures Act.

“Life has been smooth ever since,” says Donald.

After five years in Montreal, the MacRitchies returned to British Columbia with the plan to practice for two years in Prince George. They’ve lived there ever since. Both Donald and Elizabeth are actively involved in the expansion of the medical and physical therapy programs in northern BC. Their three children are UBC alumni, and Donald sits on the Medical Alumni Association (MAA) Board of Directors.

The couple recently applied their medicine and physical therapy skills side-by-side on two hiking trips to Machu Picchu and Mt. Kilimanjaro with groups of young adults with type 1 diabetes.

“These were wonderful adventures,” says Mrs. MacRitchie. “Throughout our lives, we’ve had a lot of fun together. I think that’s the key to a happy marriage.”

Beth Duncan, BMid ’06 & Rachel Rees, BMid ’11 – Pomegranate Community Midwives

Rachel Rees, BMid’11

Beth Duncan, BMid ’06 knew she wanted to study and practice midwifery in Vancouver, but when she finished her undergraduate degree, UBC Midwifery didn’t exist. She had been waiting for the program at UBC to be launched since the profession was regulated in British Columbia in 1998. In 2002, when the program selected the first 20 students (10 students into first year and 10 students into second year), she was lucky to be one of them. The program has changed and evolved over the last 10 years, but one thing that has remained consistent is the enthusiasm and passion among midwives and women for a relatively new regulated profession in Canada.

As members of the first class of a new program, Duncan and her fellow students were guinea pigs. The instructors and administrators were testing the structure and the curriculum, and they welcomed feedback and suggestions from the students.

“We felt like we had a say in the program as it evolved and continued to move forward,” Duncan says.

Now a practicing midwife at Pomegranate Community Midwives on East Hastings Street in Vancouver, Duncan works with a fellow UBC Midwifery graduate, Rachel Rees, BMid ’11. Even though Rees graduated five years after Duncan, she says the Bachelor of Midwifery program is still developing.

“A benefit of leadership by a small group of faculty members, who are constantly interacting with intelligent—and vocal—students, is how the program continually evolves,” Rees says.

Beth Duncan, BMid’06

Despite the success of midwifery in BC, the profession is still widely misunderstood. Plenty of people believe midwifery is only for “granola” mothers, and others do not understand the difference between doulas and midwives. Some people mistakenly believe they would have to pay out-of-pocket for midwifery services, when they’re actually covered by the provincial Medical Services Plan.

Rees, Duncan and their colleagues are contributing to the evolution of the profession by breaking the stereotypes and misconceptions with awareness and education. Pomegranate Community Midwives strives to be part of the community rather than a clinician office. It’s open for appointments three days a week, and on the other days it operates as a not-for-profit community space available for rent for women, baby and family-centred activities. The goal is for the community and local residents to feel invested in the space, and it’s working—the local community has embraced Pomegranate.

The profession has only been regulated in Canada for 15 years, but more and more women are choosing to use a midwife as they learn of the benefits and as midwives become more accessible. This small group of committed professionals is clearly making great strides.

The hours are long and the work is demanding, but Duncan and Rees agree midwifery is an incredibly rewarding profession.

“The element of trust present when I’m involved in someone’s most intimate and vulnerable moment is a privilege I highly value,” says Duncan.

Despite the rewarding nature of the work, the profession suffers from a high attrition rate. Dealing with this proactively is something that is taught in the UBC curriculum. Students learn how to nurture oneself as a midwife and build a plan for dealing with stress before they enter the profession. This area will likely continue to evolve as midwives look to other models of midwifery care to find best practices to lower burnout and provide effective support for an incredibly demanding and emotionally fatiguing profession.

Duncan and Rees agree the next priority of the profession is to make midwifery more accessible to marginalized women across Canada. They’re doing their part by looking at models of midwifery care used in other countries in an effort to find a more sustainable model for the Pomegranate Community Midwives where they work. The BC government and UBC Faculty of Medicine are addressing this issue by doubling the number of students admitted to the Bachelor of Midwifery program each year by 2013. Training more midwives and including student placements in rural and remote areas is intended to encourage graduates to practice outside of the Lower Mainland.

UBC Midwifery will continue to evolve in the coming decade. Individual faculty members, students, practicing midwives, government and citizens are all propelling the profession forward so it can better serve parents and newborn babies and meet rising demand for midwifery care in the future.

If you want to find out more information about Pomegranate Community Midwives, you can visit their website: http://www.pomegranate-midwives.com/

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SMP Student Welcome Reception

Dr. Allan Jones, Regional Associate Dean, Interior cordially invites you and a guest to join the UBC Faculty of Medicine Southern Medical Program for their second annual Welcome Reception to meet the class of 2017.

Friday, February 28, 2014

6:30 -8:30 PM

Volcanic Hills Estate Winery

2845 Boucherie Road, West Kelowna

Tickets $40 per person

Wine tasting and appetizers

Net proceeds from the event will help fund a bursary for the Class of 2017.

Please RSVP by February 14, 2014.

For questions, contact Lisa Roe at lisa.roe@ubc.ca or 250-807-9651.

News

Jeanine McColl, MPT'09

Event Details

Team Composition

Attire and Equipment

Presented in partnership with the Faculty of Medicine

Event Details