Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in medical student dreams of offering 'culturally safe care'

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 at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S. 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.

Shadowing nurses and doctors

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.

First experiences in health-care setting

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.

"They trained me how to see patients and whatnot, [and about] what goes on in the hospital ... but really the spirituality part, like smudging, really struck a chord in me," he said.

"And with that, I want to just study my people and study our past, especially before the fur trade."

Colin also said he appreciated meeting role models through the internship.

Addressing underrepresentation

The First Nations Health Programs are based out of all three acute care centres in the territory: Whitehorse, Dawson City and Watson Lake.

Marshal Johnson, who runs the program's youth initiatives, said under-representation of Indigenous people in health care is severe and not representative of the places we live.

"When a community isn't reflected in these critical services, it creates all sorts of … issues around access," he said. 

A result of the under-representation of Indigenous workers in health care, Johnson said, is that youth who are interested in pursuing a health-care career may lack role models.

"Because you don't know anyone from your community who's working in .. [the] health systems, a lot of youth are not really going to pursue it as a career necessarily."

They also have very few ways to get involved in health care, he said. A national survey about four years ago revealed there were almost no hospitals in the country with any sort of paid youth employment, Johnson said. 

A paid internship is "such an obvious solution," he said.

Johnson also said hospitals and patients benefit from the youth interns. Elders, for example, love to see youth from their communities and extended families working in the hospital — which, he said, has been an incredible and unexpected plus of the program.