I joined the Vernon MSA in 2020 during COVID. Before coming to Vernon, I was doing family medicine, Long Term Care and Emergency Medicine in Williams Lake from 2015 – 2020. My wife and I saw the need for a walk-in clinic in Williams Lake and also opened Borland Medi-Clinic in 2018. The clinic fulfilled a significant gap in the community, and we saw 2,500 patients in the time we were open.
I graduated from the University of Stellenbosch in 2006. I completed my residency at New Somerset Hospital in beautiful Cape Town, that is located right next to the new soccer stadium that was built for the 2010 soccer world cup. I really enjoyed the chaos of the Emergency Room, especially in the South African setting and completed a Diploma in Primary Emergency Care in 2010. During my time in Williams Lake, I did my training in Addiction Medicine and found it incredibly useful learning “opiology”, which is vital in understanding the complexity associated with the Addiction epidemic we are seeing today.
When my wife, Suzanne, and I decided to move to Vernon with our 4 children, I knew that I enjoyed Acute Care and found an immediate connection with the Hospitalist group. Dr. Travis Allen played a vital role in getting me excited about this opportunity, as we are both passionate about setting up groups for success and innovation. I have always been interested in Leadership and became involved in student politics during Medical School. This carried over to residency and Suzanne will tell you that I have tried to find solutions to problems in nearly every job that I have had in last 16 years. I am not sure if it is a blessing or a curse, but I find the process of finding a solution and working with teams to turn an idea into workable, tangible solution extremely rewarding.
During my time as a Hospitalist, I realized that my colleagues in Oncology were using drugs that I could not pronounce. I also noted an increased number of patients on our census that were struggling with cancer or cancer treatment associated issues, so I connected with BC Cancer, Dr. Ed Hardy and Dr. Mike Humphreys in 2022 and asked them if they will allow me to do GPO training and join them. It is now 3 years since they said “yes” and I consider our Cancer Centre team as one of the best multidisciplinary teams in the province, if not the world.
I am a proud Alum of the PQI training program in Interior Health and continue to advocate for physicians becoming part of finding innovative and sustainable solutions within a complex health care system through the IHA ARC (Alum Regional Council). ARC is a group of dedicated physicians (ALUM), consultants, dyads and administrators that want PQI to form a foundational piece of our healthcare system. I was fortunate to be invited to join cohort 2 of NAVIG8, which allowed me to meet amazing leaders throughout the Interior that is continuously working to serve their physician communities and patients.
During NAVIG8 I started working on a concept to bring Physician Quality Improvement and QI together in a single digital interface, standardize processes, remove silos, reduce administrative burdens and show the impact of the work done through these streams within the organization. I have not had formal training in Clinical Informatics, but as it became a core interest of mine, started learning to code in 2014 while working in rural BC. Over the past 3 years. I have spearheaded the “Bridge QI” project that is a web application dedicated to QI. The concept is now ready for testing, and we hope to make some gains in 2026.
We have amazing staff at Vernon Jubilee Hospital, that remain dedicated to make our hospital a wonderful space to work and heal. I have been fortunate to meet many of you in my short time working here and look forward meeting you, if I have not had to opportunity. As representative of the MSA, I hope to foster ongoing engagement and drive innovation through you.
