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Hello and welcome to Best Of Maclean’s.
2,500 patients. No help. Meet the lone doctor of Verona, Ontario.
I’m the only family doctor in a 2,000-person Ontario town. It's impossible to be the doctor I want to be. By Sabra Gibbens
I got into family medicine in a roundabout way. In my 20s, I studied philosophy in New York City, and after that, I spent nine years working in management and software consulting. In 2009, my husband accepted a teaching position at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, so we decided to move to nearby South Frontenac township. At that point, I was 39 years old and had grown disenchanted with my career. I wanted to make more of a difference in my community. Even back then, I heard stories about a shortage of family doctors, so I enrolled in Queen’s School of Medicine.
I was the only first-year student with kids: ours were five and one, and our third came along in year two. Motherhood forced me to become really good at time management. For four years, I diligently chipped away at my assignments, forgoing most parties and social events in favour of time with my young family. After another two years of residency, I completed my studies in 2015. Soon after graduation, I was recruited by a medical clinic in Verona, a 2,000-person town a half-hour north of Kingston. I was replacing an older woman who was retiring. Despite being one of just two family doctors on staff caring for 1,200 patients, it sounded like a dream job. Early on, it was...
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