Victoria

Welcome to the Victoria Site of the UBC Family Practice Residency Program!

The Victoria Site provides a comprehensive and flexible program that can be adapted to your individual learning requirements in your quest to fulfill your future as a well-rounded Family Physician.

Our R1 program introduces and orients you to the specialty of Family Medicine with the “Introduction to Family Medicine” block which you will complete early in the R1 year. Also typically scheduled early in the R1 year is a concentrated family practice block that is generally free of in-house call duties. Later in your R1 year, you will have the opportunity of being involved in our Integrated Family Practice / Obstetrics and Women’s Health rotation which will combine 8 weeks each of Family Practice and 8 weeks of OB GYN into an exciting 16-week horizontal experience. Our partial horizontal curriculum for the R2 year provides an opportunity for you to explore areas of interest and fulfill your personal learning objectives during the second year of residency.

Our Site is based in a medium-sized city with a population of 330,000. Victoria, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, is blessed with a sub -Mediterranean climate. The outstanding natural beauty of the area encourages an active lifestyle.

Our graduating Family Practice Residents develop skills which enable them to practice in rural and remote communities as well as in urban settings. Past graduating residents with special interests have had a successful record of being accepted into third year enhanced skill training programs. Our graduates practice far and wide, provincially, nationally, and internationally in all types of settings.

All Victoria Family Practice Residents are associated with a community Family Practice clinic throughout their entire residency which may be based anywhere in the greater Victoria region, from Sooke to Sidney or over a small mountain in nearby Mill Bay, which provides the opportunity to develop continuity with patients. Acute in-hospital experience is obtained on the family physician based hospitalist services at the Royal Jubilee and Victoria General Hospitals. Both hospitals are up to date facilities, and there is excellent bicycle routing between these facilities. The Patient Care Centre at the Royal Jubilee Hospital opened within the last decade, and all facilities are moving towards a fully electronic charting and ordering system with a single patient record for care received at all Vancouver Island acute care facilities.

The Family Practice Emergency rotations are completed in the Emergency Departments of Royal Jubilee Hospital and Victoria General Hospital, as well as at the highly regarded Emergency Department at Cowichan District Hospital in Duncan. Emergency electives may also be obtained at the Saanich Peninsula Hospital, a community hospital a short distance from Victoria, where all residents will also complete a procedural skills rotation at some time during residency.

Victoria is a lifestyle-oriented community which naturally encourages a variety of outdoor activities. You can expect to sail, rock climb, kayak, cycle, and run outdoors all year round. Surfing, skiing, golf, hiking, and fishing are close by. Arts and entertainment are also an important part of life in Victoria.

We believe your quality of life as a resident is important and this is emphasized. We work hard to provide supports to enhance resident resiliency during the busy years of residency. Our site is family-oriented and we always enjoy the families and babies of our residents. Our Residents traditionally come from many different Universities both across Canada and abroad in the IMG stream and form close and collegial relationships within the group.

We provide a Residency Training Program with excellent clinical volume and great teachers that will give you the skills that you need to practice Family Medicine in any area or setting you may choose in the future, but be forewarned that if you come, you may never want to leave Vancouver Island!

Tina Webber, Site Co-Director

tina.webber@ubc.ca

Dr. Michael Putland, Site Co-Director

michaelputland@uvic.ca

Lead Resident Message

Victoria is a comprehensive family medicine training site with a rigorous curriculum and ample opportunities for exploring self-directed learning. It has a strong tradition of internship and the reputation of training well prepared and diverse family physicians. The strength of our training is exemplified annually by the match rate for competitive R3 programs, and many of our graduates enter seamlessly into rural locums including ER and OB immediately following graduation.

In Victoria, you are never “just a family practice resident”. A large portion of the hospital is run by a well-respected community family physicians service, the hospitalists. We are a tertiary care centre with relatively few royal college residents, putting you front and centre for learning opportunities regardless of the service. Many specialist and staff physicians were once interns or residents themselves in Victoria, and therefore there is a clear appreciation for the timeline residents face to acquire skills for their future practice. Whether in the operating rooms, office, clinics, or running Codes, the staff physicians in Victoria are a fantastic resource who are keen to teach.

Another fantastic opportunity at the Victoria site is the ability to work with a strong group of medical students. The UBC Island Medical Program (IMP) has been an integral part of the residency site, and the opportunity to work with and teach medical students is rewarding, inspiring, and often humbling.

Victoria offers a well-rounded experience that is rooted in family medicine. Exposure to community family medicine is complimented through hospital-based rotations with preceptors from both specialist and general practice backgrounds. The level of responsibility is high in Victoria, as there are few senior specialty residents despite the fact that both Victoria General Hospital and Royal Jubilee Hospital are the tertiary care centres for all of Vancouver Island. In this way, the program prepares residents to quickly become competent physicians in both urban and rural settings, and to be able to manage high acuity situations and complicated patients. With a large bulk of our training taking place in the state-of-the-art Royal Jubilee Hospital Patient Care Centre, it is an exciting time to be a resident in Victoria.

Another one of the Victoria site’s strengths is also its resident culture; a small enough group to be close, but a large enough group to find like-minded individuals with whom to share your residency experience. A combination of world-class administration staff, motivated and committed program directors, and a caring cohort makes the Victoria experience special.

Outside of work and any lingering restrictions with COVID-19, living in Victoria offers fantastic social and recreational opportunities (and the temperate weather to enjoy them)! Within close proximity to downtown, you can find many provincial parks, white sandy beaches, the West Coast Trail and Juan de Fuca Trail for avid hikers, a strong local running scene, world-class surf in Tofino, kayaking opportunities in the harbour and beyond, and skiing/snowboarding at Mount Washington. Indoors, there are plenty of great restaurants and local breweries. Many residents commute by cycling year-round, with no more than a t-shirt, raincoat, and pair of Birkenstocks or Blundstones. There are also plenty of cultural activities to explore: Royal BC Museum, operas, tons of outdoor music festivals, dragon boat races, concerts, the oldest Chinatown in Canada, and so much more for you to discover for yourself.

If you are self-motivated, wanting a close-knit residency group, enjoy the outdoors, and are looking for a strong comprehensive family medicine program that will prepare you to work just about anywhere, Victoria is the place for you!

We hope to see you next year.

Dr. Chandni Desai (IMG) , Dr. Danielle Starcevic and Dr. Gil Yerushalmi