Dr. Khadija Bhimji and Dr. Alison Dugan from the Department of Medicine are among the first recipients of the End of Life Care Fellowship from Associated Medical Services (AMS).
The fellowships are five-year professional education programs for Ontario physicians designed to create environments, where the caring of dying patients is considered to be an everyday practice of a teaching ward. Each fellowship holder will attend to patients on a clinical ward of a major teaching hospital and will be expected to provide a model of care at the end of life for students and trainees, as well as for professional colleagues.
“Competency in the proper care of the dying is required of every physician,” said AMS President and CEO, Dr. William Seidelman. “We hope that by 2010 the clinical experience of every medical student and medical resident in an Ontario teaching hospital will include proper care at end of life.”
AMS is investing $750,000 in the program and the five participating Ontario faculties of medicine — including the University of Ottawa — are each contributing the equivalent of $150,000 for a total of $1.5 million.
AMS was established in 1936 by Dr. Jason Hannah as a not-for-profit, physician-sponsored health care organization. With the advent of Medicare, AMS became a charitable organization supplementing innovations in medicine and health services.
