As Dr. David Clarkson stood at the podium Friday to talk about the new Family Medicine Training Unit (FMTU) at Credit Valley Hospital, a project he was instrumental in establishing, he stood below a large, striking black and white photo.
It was a beautiful shot of a Credit Valley Railway steam engine under full power, with smoke billowing everywhere, puffing up a hill. It looked like it was probably taken in the last century.
“In fact, I was on that train when that picture was taken,” the personable Dr. Clarkson said in an interview shortly after the official launch of the FMTU, an exciting model that will see just-graduated doctors spend two years at CVH learning the craft of family medicine.
Clarkson’s roots go deep in the community. He was on the replica train for an event hosted by Credit Valley Conservation, of which his now 91-year-old father Grant (former deputy reeve and reeve of the Town of Mississauga) was then the chair. Although Mississauga West MPP Bob Delaney referenced the photo was proving the hospital is on track, with a full head of steam behind it, the engine provided by the Steam Restoration Society ran into some trouble that day and, “wouldn’t climb the hill” Clarkson recalled.
Yes, things are not always as they seem. Clarkson may be a descendant of one of the founding families of Dixie but he does not see the past through rose-coloured glasses.
The new program at CVH is light years ahead of what he faced when he opened his own practice here in 1972.
He decided that medicine was for him when he was a senior at Streetsville Secondary School. After he graduated, there was an informal system of mentorship and local doctors like Dr. Reg Perkin and Dr. Alex Borgiel provided assistance.
But the FMTU project is light years ahead of that model. Both Clarkson and CVH have a huge ulterior motive in providing a model that exposes young doctors to all aspects of hospital operations, provides a supportive network and even gives them a roster of patients they can transfer to their own practices. The idea is to have the doctors stay right here in Mississauga, where they are desperately needed. Only 11.4 per cent of Ontario doctors are accepting any new patients.
It irks Clarkson that other parts of Ontario are given hundreds of thousands of government dollars to attract new doctors when the need in growing communities such as Mississauga is just as severe.
The student doctors could have no better teacher than Clarkson, who has just been named a recipient of the College of Physicians and Surgeons council award, which recognizers practitioners “who come closest to meeting society’s vision of an ideal physician.”
Dr. Megan Hogan, one of the freshman class of four in the FMTU said the award is well deserved. “He’s incredible,” she said. “He’s so real. He genuinely cares about the patients.”
Colleague Dr. Paul Philbrook said Clarkson, a former Medical Officer of Health for Niagara Region and ex-chief of medicine at CVH, has done so many things for the hospital and community over the years that they are difficult to enumerate. For instance, he established a program for hospital patients who have no family doctors, so that a pool of physicians provides them service after they are released. He also worked weekly in a homeless shelter for some time.
These are not things you will learn from the self-effacing doctor himself.
What makes a good family doctor, Clarkson is asked. “A passion to heal,” he replies instantly. That informs the individual relationship which is now and always will be the key to the patient-doctor relationship, he says.
The 61-year-old has sacrificed about a third of his own practice to become one of the three doctors who teach and model for the FMTU.
Asked about his own future plans, Clarkson says: “I will continue to practice as a leader until I am 65. I will continue to practice as a healer until my brain goes soft.”
