Doctors to Nunavut

Dave Gravelle said he'd now had his Rotary moment - he'd been fined.  Recently he had requests for placements from the Family Medicine Rural Education program and two doctors in Midland agreed to accept the candidates but both doctors had already agreed to go to Nunavut for part of the time the students would be here.  After some scrambling and with the support of Rotary, it was agreed that Ethan and Tom would go too.

So Doctors Siedlecki and McGuire and students Tom Lu and Ethan Tumarkin left on a 3,000 km flight to a much colder place.  Tom likened it to a scene shot by a Mars Lander.  Nunavut is huge, over 2 million sq. km and home to only 36,000 people.  The airport was built in WW II but the runway was added on to so it could act as a secondary for the space shuttle.

Qikitani General Hospital serves the town of Iqualuit and surrounding areas.  There are no family doctors - people see nurses in clinics and then are medvac'd if it's serious.  The hospital has 35 beds and clinics during the day and 24/7 emergency service.

Tom and Ethan led us on a photographic tour of the hospital and the town and the local grocery with a focus on prices - $27.00 for a pound of bacon.  The trip was made possible by help from Rotary and the co-operation of the participating doctors and hospitals and both felt that it had been a great learning experience, especially for two people from large urban environments, that gave them a great appreciation of the different problems and concerns of different parts of the country.