After ten years of work, the university medical campus in Rimouski is coming to life.
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The 18 members of the first cohort are now settled in the region.
The Aventure Médecine project, a collaboration between Laval University and the University of Quebec at Rimouski, began about ten years ago before coming to fruition in 2018.
The President and CEO of the CISSS du Bas-Saint-Laurent, Isabelle Malo, is delighted to have succeeded in bringing this project to fruition in a difficult context.
“We managed to do it extremely quickly and despite the COVID-19, we managed to stay the course,” said Isabelle Malo.
These are 18 students who will be able to follow, if they wish, all their training in Rimouski.
The idea is to train doctors in the regions, to confront them with the reality of the regions, hoping that they wish to practice in Eastern Quebec.
As of January 2023, they will have access to the brand new teaching pavilion adjacent to the Rimouski hospital, which is currently under construction at a cost of $27M. This pavilion will allow future doctors to have a clinical exposure quickly in their academic course.
“What’s going to be different from the Quebec cohort is that they’re going to have clinical exposure which is very quick, that’s why the medicine pavilion is next to the hospital. explained Dr. Gabrielle Gagnon, assistant vice-dean of the Rimouski medical campus.
The limited number of places in this training allows privileged access to teachers, which convinced several students to choose Rimouski.
“I think we’re going to have a much more personal learning, then quickly exposed in a clinical setting, having opportunities much earlier than we would have in large centers,” said medical student Adrianne Létourneau.