Out of the ambulance and into the hospital.
It’s a journey thousands of patients in British Columbia’s healthcare system undertake daily. It’s also the incredible journey taken by two of the province’s newest doctors.
Marco Law and Peter Nguyen graduated from medical school in May and earned their MDs.
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Somehow, they both managed to accomplish that already difficult task while working as paramedics with the BC Ambulance Service.
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“It was a lot easier than people expected,” said Nguyen, who will begin a residency in anesthesiology in Victoria next month.
“I found that when I was in medical school, the first two years were pretty clinical, so we learned a lot from our lectures and slides… but working as a paramedic gave me a context for what we were learning in class, so it was almost how to also learn at work.”
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Law, who already has a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, said the training fortunately prepared him for the workload.
“It’s not an easy journey,” he said.
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Both men mentioned the time they spent in the back of the ambulance helping them transition from paramedic to doctor.
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Nguyen added that the experience helped him choose his specialty as an anesthesiologist, where he will have to build relationships of trust with people undergoing operations.
“(You) make them feel comfortable and you can build that relationship… when sometimes you take away their consciousness with medication, sometimes you take away their ability to breathe and they have to trust that you will do all that for them, to be their advocate.” in the operating room,” he said.
“Which I found very similar to being a paramedic.”
Law is headed to Nelson, where he will begin a residency in family medicine and work in rural clinics and hospitals.
His experience working as a paramedic stationed at Sea-to-Sky also helped influence that decision, albeit in a different way.
“You never know how the day is going to go and I like that unpredictability,” he said.
“I definitely want to do a bit of rural medicine to start with, I like that broad scope of being able to do a bit of everything.”
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In the long term, Law said she hopes to transition to the policy side of the health care system, where her experience working in prehospital and hospital care settings could prove valuable.
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And while both men are embarking on a highly demanding new career, neither is ready to give up the blue uniform of the BC Ambulance Service just yet.
“I would love to continue working with them and be able to pick up shifts here and there, mix it up,” Law said.
“It’s really hard to leave work, I find it very rewarding and it gives me a very different perspective on medicine,” Nguyen added.
“I hope to work while I’m in Victoria just a few shifts each month… but eventually I’ll have to close the chapter.”
