GSUR Rotation Information

Grande Prairie Family Medicine General Surgery Rotation

Information for Visiting Surgery Residents from the FM Residents

Grande Prairie Culture

The family medicine program in Grande Prairie emphasizes learning for its residents by providing clinical experiences that are not service based. This gives residents the freedom to get the most out of their rotations rather spending all of their time doing “scut”.

If we are on call for the day, we are happy to manage everything that comes up on the wards in addition to new consults. If we aren’t on call, we are happy to help out with pages from the wards during the day but would appreciate your leniency in terms of doing things ASAP. If we are in ERCP or the OPD or checking out an operation in the OR, please allow us to learn from those experiences and catch up on ward things in between. If we are repeatedly leaving to go to the ward, it limits our learning opportunities during the day.

Rounds

We really appreciate you taking the time to give us a one-line ID for patients we haven’t met before that you may have operated on without us. Even just a quick “18M, lap appy, not perforated, no complications, likely discharge tomorrow” would suffice. Just so we kind of know what’s going on without scouring the chart/Netcare. Another scenario would be if we were in clinic for a day and could use a short “catch-up” on what happened while we were away.

Please be open to us asking questions about day-to-day management. If you don’t mind taking the time to explain your rationale, we will feel more confident doing it on our own. Some examples: antibiotic choices, DVT prophylaxis options, diet advancement post-op.

We will gladly write progress notes on patients, but please keep in mind that we can only write so fast while absorbing what you and the patient are saying. Please be patient with us as we try to keep up.

Teaching

Our program promotes teaching that is targeted to what a family doctor would need to know rather than detailed, specialty-specific knowledge.

If there is time, we do appreciate you teaching us about high yield surgery topics like SBO, appendicitis, gallbladder pathology, breast cancer, etc.

If something interesting is going on, please let us know! We would likely be more than happy to observe/participate.

Days Away - Family Medicine Residents

Family Medicine Rounds- we have rounds every Friday morning.

Callback Family Medicine Clinics- we return to our home clinics for one half day per week or one full day every two weeks.

Academic Days- sometimes we have academic days scheduled, during which we are not to have any clinical responsibilities (including rounds).

Vacation/Flex Days- we submit our request for vacation about a month before the block starts and will know those days when we start the rotation.