Dr. Sean Groves received the Fellowship of Rural and Remote Medicine this month in Nova Scotia. (submitted photo/Jenna Keindel)

By Derek Cornet

National recognition

La Ronge doctor wins award for rural and remote medicine

Apr 17, 2019 | 5:17 PM

Dr. Sean Groves, who has been a physician in La Ronge for nearly 15 years, was honoured this month with the Fellowship of Rural and Remote Medicine.

The award was presented by the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada (SRPC) in Nova Scotia during the 27^th annual Rural and Remote Medicine Course. It’s meant to recognize persons or organizations that have made a significant contribution to rural medicine in Canada. Groves attended the event as a presenter and didn’t know he would be receiving the award.

“It was a pleasant surprise,” he said. “The Rural and Remote Medicine Fellowship is in many ways a service-based award, so the longer you serve as a rural physician, the more likely it is to be nominated.”

In order to receive the award, those who are nominated also need to be recipients of the Rural Service Award, which Groves received in 2016. They also need to have a minimum of 10 points in five categories and be a member of the SRPC for the last consecutive five years. Groves was one of 19 doctors across the country to receive the fellowship this year.

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Groves went to school to become a doctor at the University of Saskatchewan and he did his residency training in Prince Albert. He stated part of the residency included spending time in northern communities, which is how he first came to La Ronge. After he became a doctor, Groves decided to stay.

“I’ve been practicing here right since the start of my career,” he said. “Rural medicine is a discipline that really is a specialty all on its own and it’s one of the most challenging areas of medicine I can think of practicing.”

By practicing medicine in La Ronge or other rural and remote areas, he said there’s a lot of hands-on work doctors do that their colleagues wouldn’t in larger centres. Groves noted doctors in La Ronge deal with births, deaths and all the heath care aspects in between. For example, he stated doctors in town perform birth services, as well as minor surgery and anesthesia.

“Rural medicine is still one of the areas of medicine that really allows you to continue to be what people traditionally think of as a doctor,” Groves said. “We get to do basically whatever our patients need and, the nice thing about being in a rural community, is we’re a little bit more removed from some of the specialty care, so we take on a lot of the additional responsibilities.”

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derek.cornet@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @saskjourno