A pair of students from the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Medicine are experiencing what it's like to live and work in Carman. Rural Week is a seven day learning experience that integrates first year med students into northern and rural Manitoba with the hope they will consider practicing in those communities one day. It is also a chance for those communicates to showcase themselves and promote the various career and lifestyle opportunities and benefits it has to offer.

Tarik Leylek and Alexander Schultz have both lived in Winnipeg their whole lives and by the middle of the week had gained a good understanding of life outside of The Perimeter by playing Pickleball with some locals in Elm Creek, administering immunizations at an area Hutterite colony and were looking forward to accompanying a local surgeon for a minor procedure at Carman Memorial Hospital.

Leylek says one of the first things he noticed about rural medicine is that the overall healthcare system is quite interconnected, often with various services located within walking distance of each other. He notes this is quite different from what he's seen in Winnipeg.

"That's something that's helpful to both the patient population, who can get easy access, as well as the healthcare professionals, enabling them to work together."

Leylek thinks this team-based approach is fantastic and feels that it is the way of the future for medicine. "Having everyone work so close together is only going to lead to better outcomes for the patients."
    
Schultz admits this system is both intimidating and intriguing for him as a young student. "It's quite unique but it is also quite foreign to us."

As for what surprised them to learn about rural medicine, Schultz says for him it was seeing the distance between the hospitals throughout the region.

"In Winnipeg we have hospitals everywhere and they're quite close, but if you look at Boundary Trails, it's between two cities so you probably get different patients from different communities who have different issues coming together in one location."

For Leylek, he says he was quite interested to discover the relationships that patients are able to establish with their local physicians.

"It helps build strong relationships that can lead to better care that sometimes is maybe lacking if you're rotating between different physicians."

He notes however, building a relationship can also be difficult in a rural setting if your community is having a hard time retaining doctors. Leylek adds that Rural Week is a good start to helping attract rural physicians, saying that the time he spent in Carman certainly opened his eyes.

"With a lot of our class being from the city and not having that exposure is something that would limit our consideration of coming rural. But I think giving us a week in different rural communities across Manitoba is a good first step in giving us that idea and perception of what rural medicine is."

Schultz agrees, and says the exposure that Rural Week offers plays an important role in doctor recruitment.

"I don't think we really know anything about rural medicine because we don't see it, and so I think we just assume that is the same thing that we see inside (Winnipeg)."

Both Schultz and Leylek admit rural medicine wasn't on their radar until this past week, and say this experience has given them something to consider for the future.