The results are in and CMA members from Yukon have chosen Dr. Katharine Smart as this year’s president-elect nominee.
Dr. Smart is a pediatrician who’s helped to build a collaborative and social approach to child health in Yukon. In addition to working at Klondyke Pediatrics and the Whitehorse General Hospital, she travels to rural and remote communities across the territory to care for patients where they live and works closely with schools and educators.
She is currently serving as president of the Yukon Medical Association.
Recognizing the significant challenges facing health care in Canada, including access to primary care, Dr. Smart called on physicians throughout the campaign to be ready for — and embrace — change in medicine.
Physicians need to lead in the delivery of health care to Canadians. We have to think outside the box and engage with new ways of doing things. This may feel uncomfortable and will certainly challenge us to adapt our practice in new and innovative ways.
And she encouraged the CMA to lead this change on behalf of the profession, by:
- exploring the potential of technology – including virtual care – to make physicians’ work more efficient and productive, and augment the care patients receive
- tackling the system-level barriers to improving physician health and wellness, to create working environments that optimize patient care, and support and engage the physicians who provide it
- focusing on health human resource planning and exploring the need for more training opportunities and recruitment and retention efforts in rural, remote and Indigenous communities
Working with members across the country in this work will be critical for the CMA, says Dr. Smart.
The more individual physicians see the relevance of the CMA, the more powerful its voice will be in advocacy and systems change.
Dr. Smart will be put forward as Yukon’s candidate at the CMA’s General Council meeting in Halifax this August; once ratified at the meeting, she will become CMA president in 2021.
The CMA would like to thank the two other candidates, Dr. Alexander Poole and Dr. Rao Tadepalli, for the work and time they dedicated to this year’s election.
The election ran from Feb. 5 to 19; voting was open to CMA members in Yukon.