Former McMaster classmates named Family Physicians of the Year
[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/physicians.jpg” caption=”Stephen Buchman and Elizabeth Shaw, both graduates of McMasters medical program in 1981, have been named Family Physician of the Year.”]Family doctors, Elizabeth Shaw of Hamilton and Stephen (Sandy) Buchman of Mississauga, both graduates of McMaster's medical program in 1981, have been named Family Physician of the Year for the Southern Ontario Region by the Ontario College of Family Physicians.
Both are faculty members in the Department of Family Medicine of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. Shaw is an associate professor and director of McMaster's Family Medicine postgraduate program. Buchman is an associate clinical professor.
“We are thrilled that these two family physicians are getting the recognition they both so deserve,” said Cheryl Levitt, chair of family medicine at McMaster. “Individually, both Liz and Sandy are enormously effective family doctors. They provide outstanding patient care, are respected leaders and wonderful role models for their peers and their students.”
Shaw, who also did her family medicine residency at McMaster, has a small clinical practice within the McMaster Family Practice Unit at the West End Clinic on Main Street West. For Shaw, family medicine is all about the opportunity to build relationships that she feels are unique to the profession.
“Being a family doctor is a unique profession because you are not committed to a defined body of knowledge, you are committed to knowing what is necessary to care for your patients and the community in which they live,” she says.
She says family medicine offers classic cradle to grave care. “The chance to deliver babies and watch them grow or to be with your patients when they die: It is an amazing privilege. These are experiences that personally and professionally feed me.”
Shaw assures the physician students she teaches that family medicine offers both endless opportunities to learn and enormous challenges. “They can find a niche as a family doctor whether their interest is in anything from maternal to palliative care without forsaking a holistic approach.”
Buchman is a family physician with Village Medical Associates in Mississauga. He did his residency in family medicine at the University of Toronto.
“Being a family doctor is not just a role it's part and parcel of who you are,” Buchman says. “It's integrated into your person and being. It's a meaningful profession because you are helping others. It gives your life purpose.”
Referring to the book by Stephen Covey, First Things First, to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy is, according to the author, what all human beings require for happiness.
Buchman says, for him, family medicine integrates these concepts into one career. “Family medicine is a coming together of my intellectual, professional and spiritual interests.”
John Kelton, dean and vice-president of the Faculty of Health Sciences and dean of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster says: “Traditionally, a higher proportion of McMaster medical graduates go into family medicine than other Canadian medical schools. We produce excellent, dedicated family doctors here.”
Lynn Wilson, who graduated from McMaster's Faculty of Science in 1979, was chosen Family Physician of theYear for both the Toronto Region and for all of Ontario. She received the Reg L. Perkin Award from the College of Family Physicians of Canada recently during a family medicine forum held in Toronto.
Jan Kasperski, executive director, Ontario College of Family Physicians said: “The patients of every family doctor in the southern region believe that their own doctor is deserving of the title Family Physician of the Year. We are so proud that the two physicians, Dr. Shaw and Dr. Buchman, are such wonderful representatives of this part of the province. McMaster University should be justifiably proud of both of them and all their family medicine graduates.”
