Finding Balance: Coffee and a Chat with Dr. Mike Wickham in Canmore

The rain poured down at the Good Earth café as I waited for Dr. Mike Wickham to arrive.  Main Street in Canmore is set against a mountainous backdrop. Despite the gloomy weather it is a beautiful setting and must be a delight to live and work in.

Dr. Wickham arrived, greeting me with a warm hug and a huge smile, which is how I imagine he greets everyone. We each had a delicious “very berry” muffin (made locally) and a warm beverage. I opted for a London Fog while Dr. Wickham prefers a mocha, which he says has just the right amount of sweet in it.

We sat by the window with our warm drinks and muffins as the rain came down outside, chatting and laughing like old friends. As we spoke of his medical career, members of the community drifted in and out picking up their morning coffee, and most stopped by to say hello to their friend ‘Mike’.

Dr. Mike Wickham has worked in Canmore for 21 years as an Emergency Medicine Physician. He completed all his training in Calgary, but as a youth spent many weekends and summers staying with friends in Canmore. He told me he always knew he wanted to live there. For the first 15 years that he was practicing he would commute to Calgary for 4-5 shifts per month at the Foothills Hospital. For the past 6 years he has been working solely in Canmore, and that’s the way he likes it.

As our time together drew to a close, I asked him the big question; “why rural medicine”? He replied that he was “done with being constantly behind all the time”. He expressed a longing for a work/life balance for him, his wife and their two sons (ages 15 & 17). He added that he is “content with the pace of life in Canmore.”

Dr. Wickham shared his theory that “if we do a good job teaching clerks, they often return to the community as residents and practitioners.” I told him that there are some preceptors who prefer to teach residents over clerks, or medical students early on in their training. His advice to preceptors (both seasoned and new) is: “you need to eat your veggies before you can have dessert!” In other words, he enjoys building the base of knowledge the physicians of tomorrow will carry throughout their careers, in addition to seeing them actively use that knowledge in residency.

“Teaching makes you better,” said Dr. Wickham, “because in order to ask the questions, you need to know the answers”.

It is obvious to me that Mike is deeply invested in his community and it was such a pleasure to chat with him about his passion for rural medicine and rural medical education.

Know someone who is interested in becoming a preceptor?

Visit https://cumming.ucalgary.ca/ruralmedicine/physicians/preceptor