As I write this issue, the RPAP Review report writing stage should be completed in two weeks. We here at RPAP | Health Workforce for Alberta are grateful for the letters of support from individuals, communities and local government across Alberta, and from associations such as the Alberta Chambers of Commerce (ACC), and Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties (AAMDC).
We are humbled at some of the things said in support of RPAP’s single and valued mission in support of rural Alberta. Unlike the faculties of medicine, and other cumbersome bureaucracy’s, RPAP is not conflicted with multiple priorities or conflicting needs.
One letter of support we received from a graduate of Alberta’s medical schools and rural residency program, sums it up the best: “Being a rural doc is not easy; and very different from urban family medicine.”
He continues: “It is scary and intimidating to contemplate entering a job like this; and to do so requires more than just didactic clinical education coordinated from the urban-based Universities in Calgary and Edmonton – it requires a fundamental understanding and adherence to the idea that rural is different; rural medical needs are served in a different way; and getting ready for rural medicine is vastly different from getting ready for any other kind of medicine. RPAP gets this. They get rural medicine and the practice readiness needs of rural docs.”
And this physician states clearly: “In my view the success of these programs [the rural family medicine residency programs, RAN and RAS] is directly attributable to the role that RPAP plays in administering the programming and holding the Universities accountable to preparing the residents for rural family practice.”
As the incoming interim Executive Director, Jacques Magnan, says: ““There is seldom a substitute for the rationale voice of true experience… It is indeed a strong elaboration of what key value proposition RPAP represents.”
In a fact based review, the evidence of RPAP’s efficiency and effectiveness would be substantiated, and warrant expanding RPAP’s writ. We shall see.
As I leave RPAP, after 19 years, I am proud of the accomplishments of the team members over those years who, together, have brought the RPAP mission and vision to life, and made it the successful, ever improving, but not perfect, rural-focused health workforce agency it is. Thank-you to everyone who has contributed to RPAP, and by extension to rural Alberta!
I leave with the following memorable lyrics from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel:
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
There’s a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll never walk alone
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll never walk
You’ll never walk
You’ll never walk alone
– 30 –