SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A Yellowknife doctor received a national award this fall even as there are fewer doctors practising her discipline in the North.

Dr. Amy Hendricks has been a permanent internist working out of the Stanton Medical Clinic over the last 13 years after having come to the city directly from McGill University in 2002.

Stanton is the only employer of general internal doctors in the North and historically has hired a maximum of four at a time. Often the hospital will hire out internal doctors on a locum, or temporary basis.

Hendricks, who up until this year, remained the last permanent internal doctor in Yellowknife, received the Osler Award in October from the Canadian Society of Internal Medicine.

CSIM is the national professional society for internal medicine doctors and provides the award named after Sir William Osler, a Canadian doctor who was among the physicians who founded John Hopkins Hospital. The award recognizes an individual every year for their excellence in internal medicine based on clinical practice, research, medical education or professional development.

"I felt honoured and it was also a real confirmation that a voice for a remote physician is welcome and honoured at the national table as our speciality evolves," she said. "It is easy to feel isolated and that the perspective or the work you do isn't acknowledged in the national spotlight."

Hendricks was hired in 2002 at the age of 30 by long-time internist and former medical director Dr. John Morse from Stanton Territorial Hospital. With an undergraduate degree and a medical degree with four years of specialized training in internal medicine, Hendricks has been noted by her colleagues as having become a rare advocate for rural and community health care in the north, particularly through her role as a national council member with CSIM for eight years.

Over the past decade she has tried to communicate what general health-care pressures are in the North and how the profession of internal medicine is different in remote and small communities compared to urban centres. She has sat on a sub committee for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, for example, to promote what communities need from accredited general internal medicine professionals.

Dr. Neil Gibson, a clinical professor with the University of Alberta's Faculty of Dentistry and Medicine was among the panel who voted for Hendricks and travelled to Stanton for many years to provide locum internal medicine care. He said Yellowknifers should note Hendricks was the sole winner of the award this year when typically in past years it has been shared.

"Amy has done a tremendous job in advocating the North (and) why it is a great place to practice," he said, pointing out that recruiting general internists to the North and other rural communities has become difficult because young people are attracted to big cities. "She has enjoyed her time there."

Internal medical physicians are less understood than other practitioners like a family doctors or a sub-specialists like cardiologists when it comes to health care delivery - even as the profile of the discipline has improved over the last five years, Hendricks explained. She said the practice is important when it comes to patient experience because internists usually specialize in caring for adults with multiple body part diseases and provide direction among teams of health care professionals on how a patient should be cared for.

She added internists provide consultation services for patients when they can't get to her office and maintains communication after they return to their communities.

The range of settings in which an internal doctor sees patients also varies and is different from other physicians, she said.

Her work has meant seeing patients in a variety of contexts, including out-patient settings, diagnostic positions, intensive care units or situations where a person is on a ventilator. She has also done numerous home visits.

The award addresses professional development, in addition to how the needs of a given community have been met, which Hendricks says has been her goal.

"My skill set has evolved to become what the North needed," she said, adding the discipline allows flexibility for a community's health requirements.

"They needed someone who could manage complex diabetes so I learned how to manage insulin pumps. They needed someone who could manage an ultrasound of the heart so I went off and did extra training in that. They needed someone who could check pacemakers and defibrillators so I did that."

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