Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in medical student dreams of offering 'culturally safe care'
CBC
The Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation has had its own health-care practices since time immemorial, but soon, it will also have a citizen attending medical school.
Jamie Thomas, 23, begins med school at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, this fall.
She said her biggest goal is to provide health care that honours Indigenous people and culture.
"I just want to make sure that I can lead with culturally safe care," Thomas said. "[And to be] able to have ceremony in the hospital."
Combining Indigenous and western practices is a more recent phenomenon, she said.
"Historically, medicine has taken a very western approach. It's a western system that has not valued traditional medicines in the past."
Thomas realized she wanted to be a doctor while in high school, after which she completed a bachelor's degree in health sciences, also at Dalhousie. It is nerve-wracking, she said, to leave her home of Dawson City, Yukon, where she has her support systems, and head back south for school.
Even before beginning medical school, Thomas will have had several months of experience in a health-care environment, both at the Dawson City Community Hospital as well as Whitehorse General Hospital.
As part of her learning journey, Thomas participated in the Indigenous workforce initiative through First Nations Health Programs. The program aims to increase Indigenous representation in health-care settings, and is in response to the Yukon's Hospital Act, which specifies that the territory must remedy "the under-representation of First Nations citizens" in health care.
Thomas said shadowing nurses and physicians while they work, and being able to ask them questions, was incredible.
The initiative aims to have two interns at Whitehorse General Hospital and at least one each at Dawson City Community Hospital and Watson Lake Community Hospital.
Thomas is just one of several people who've participated in the internship program. Molly Hobbis from Whitehorse, who's headed to the University of British Columbia Okanagan to study nursing, said her experience at Whitehorse General Hospital was positive and welcoming.
"I learned a lot about myself and what kind of nurse I want to be," she said.
Kristopher Colin, of Fort McPherson, N.W.T., also completed an internship at Whitehorse General and said that seeing ceremony practiced in the hospital was powerful.
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