Rural Continuing Medical Education Community Program

This past year, the RCME Community Program made great strides in bringing more RSA communities on board for collective learning. Thirty RSA communities were integrated into the Program, raising the total number of communities within it to 85 (out of a total of 101) since launching in August 2019. This achievement is the result of the extensive community- and relationship-building efforts by Program staff.

Further to extending its reach into rural communities across BC, the RCME Community Program also celebrated the commitment of sustainable funding from the Joint Standing Committee on Rural Issues. The attainment of dedicated funding recognizes the important, high-quality work being performed by the Program and allows it to sustainably plan and implement the Program in future years.

The RCME Community Program also continued building strong relationships across BC to increase awareness and uptake of its offerings. Staff facilitated regional connections with the Divisions of Family Practice, and Doctors of BC’s General Practice Services Committee liaisons and Facility Engagement liaisons. Within the health authorities, inter-departmental connections were also established with Physician Compensation, Physician Engagement, and Quality and Medical Affairs. Program leads were also instrumental in developing provincial connections with stakeholders and groups, including a new partnership with the Rural Retention Program Review team to discuss rural program eligibility and physician count verification processes, and other connections with University of British Columbia’s Rural Continuing Professional Development and Rural Education Action Plan staff.

A new funding initiative, called the Specialist, Sub-specialty, Indigenous and Funding for Innovation (SPIFI), was also launched by the RCME Community Program early in the year. SPIFI provides funding for groups of physicians living and working in RSA communities to plan, develop, and deliver innovative community RCME educational opportunities that are not easily supported by RCME Community Program funds. Since launching last April, 14 applications have been supported through SPIFI, including a short documentary, due for release in 2021, called The Rural Doctor, and an innovative project on alternative therapies for mental health, called the “Physician Learning Project on Psychedelics and Complimentary Techniques: A Virtual Series”, accredited for 10.5 MOC and MainPro+ CME credits.

Working across five health regions in BC, RCME Community Program funding and liaisons created numerous CME opportunities for rural physicians, which was especially important during the pandemic. Some of the courses that team coordinated include:

• Virtual courses and online subscriptions on Emergency Medicine, Orthopedics, and Palliative Care
• COVID Intubation for Rural Communities
• Neonatal Resuscitation Program
• Gender-affirming Care
• Rural Airway Management Course
• LEAP course
• ALARM course

In the coming year, the RCME Community Program will strive to bring on board the remainder of eligible RSA communities in BC. In addition, the Program will increase the scale of the SPIFI funding initiative by promoting it more robustly to specialists and First Nations groups. It will also look outside the province to disseminate the Program’s successes, look for models that it could potentially emulate, and explore opportunities to partner with the Nisga’a Valley Health Authority, where three new physicians now live and practice.