Dean Smith is thrilled to be here!
Greetings. everyone,
As I step into my role as dean of the Faculty of Medicine, I’d like to share a few thoughts on the road ahead and why I find myself drawn to this opportunity.
Firstly, it’s wonderful to be back on the Island. My wife Jane, our two dogs Murphy and Lincoln, and I recently made the journey from Saskatoon to Stanhope, and the warmth of your Island welcome hasn’t gone unnoticed. We are thrilled to be here. Thank you for making us feel so at home.
The second is a little about me and why I want to work here. My passion is what medical education and research can do in every community it touches, and your vision here to build a program to help meet the needs of Islanders from tip to tip is ambitious, compelling and exciting. Returning to the Maritimes to do it is a terrific bonus.
A bit about my background: I’m a DAL Medical School graduate and spent 25 years as a family physician in Moncton. During my tenure as VP of Medicine in New Brunswick, during the transition from 52 hospitals to eight regions, I gained significant expertise in health system reform and administration. I held the position of Senior Associate Dean of Education within the Faculty of Medicine at DAL and had a leadership role in developing and overseeing the new Dalhousie medical education program, launched in Saint John. I had the privilege to be involved in starting new family medicine residency programs in PEI, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Most recently, as Dean of the College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), my team and I led a significant restructuring of the College of Medicine. Throughout my career, I have been involved in creating programs from the ground up, change management, and fixing programs that need help. This opportunity to be part of building something new and unique, while partnering with Memorial’s award-winning medical school is an opportunity I am very excited to take on.
Successfully engaging our existing physicians and attracting more physicians to the Island are both critically important to the success of PEI’s medical school and, frankly, the future of the healthcare system. There is no doubt it will be challenging to develop a medical school in a post-pandemic healthcare system that is already strained. UPEI and Health PEI have a duty to proceed with care, so Islanders are well served and to create an environment where physicians want to participate. I am really looking forward to working with the physician community, Health PEI, the university community, and others to bring this to fruition.
As I will often say in closing my blog, my door is open, and I am happy to chat. I look forward to settling in and getting to know each of you better.
