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The Road To Wiarton
He is the Wiarton Hospital Site Chief and Associate Medical Officer of Health, but for family doctor Shiv Grewal the road to Wiarton was anything but straight.
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After growing up and training in Winnipeg, Shiv worked in Northern Manitoba and Nunavut in isolated First Nations and Inuit communities. After doing some further public health and tropical medicine training he and his wife (Ann) worked in Cambodia starting a development and training project for the University of Toronto. They also have worked in Sri Lanka and Indonesia after the Tsunami. Currently both of them are providing teaching and training to health care workers in Uganda. Dr. Grewal teaches in a public health Masters degree course in Uganda, that is associated with Save the Mothers www.savethemothers.com, a Canadian NGO started by Dr. Jean Chamberlain to help reduce maternal mortality.
“My parents came as immigrants to Canada and through hard work they were able to provide us with a relatively stable middle class upbringing,” he explains.
“I’ve had more in terms of access to education in Canada than I would have had in India. I think it’s a privilege to grow up in a country like this and I feel a responsibility to give something back and I think as a physician I’m in the perfect position to do that.”
Despite the differing geography, Grewal says the issues facing many of the areas he’s practiced have been similar in nature. Access to medical care, specialists and hospital services are common issues.
“As rural family physicians we’re probably the best trained to go work in developing countries because we can work under extreme situations with little back up in terms of diagnostic services and specialist care. We’re trained to do things on our own,” Grewal says.
After Cambodia, Grewal and his wife Ann were looking for someplace to settle down. She joined a midwifery practice in Owen Sound and he tagged along. They’ve been here for two and a half years and love the area.
In addition to his other duties, Dr. Grewal is a family physician preceptor through the University of Toronto’s Family Medicine Program. As a part of the program, Doctors hoping to practice family medicine must spend eight weeks in a rural setting.
“I act as their teacher-advisor,” he explains, “they come work with me in the office and the hospital and see patients, and we discuss patients and just teach them basically how to be family physicians.”
It’s been shown that people who train in a rural area are most likely to return, so the program is a great investment in the future. Recently, Grewal was honored as this year’s recipient of the U of T’s Hollister King Teaching Award. The award is presented to a teaching physician who best exemplifies the ideals of excellence in family medicine, based on the four principles of family medicine.
Those principles are: the Doctor-Patient Relationship is central to Family Medicine, the Family Physician is an Effective Clinician, Family Medicine is Community-Based and The Family Physician is a Resource to a Defined Practice Population.
The award was unexpected, but Grewal says it speaks well of the Wiarton area.
“It continues the precedent that’s been set in Wiarton where Dr. Barker and Dr. Van Dorp have both been recognized for their work with education. So in Wiarton there is a strong tradition of residents coming up here to train, which dates back to Dr. Leeson’s long practice here.”
The award nomination came from one of Grewal’s students. While he’s pleased by the honour, he says the credit belongs to everyone.
“The preceptor is one person, but to be fair it’s all about the hospital environment and nursing staff and my office staff. So if a resident nominates me they’re nominating the rest of the hospital and staff as well. We won this award together.”
(adapted from Grey Bruce Health Services 'Checkup' Vol 3 Iss 3 September 2007)
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