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Like many rural physicians, Dr. Sheila Felsch, wears many hats as a community doctor in Portage la Prairie. She works in the ER, supervises the inpatient clinical teaching unit, provides critical care, is the Anesthesia Lead in Portage la Prairie, and cares for patients in her family practice at Portage Clinic. Having grown up on a grain and bison farm near Ridgeville, Manitoba, she was drawn to practising in a small town. Dr. Felsch went to medical school at UM, completed her Family Medicine residency in Portage la Prairie, and finished her Family Practice Anesthesia training at UM in 2019. 

The initial draw to medicine came from her fascination with human physiology, but Dr. Felsch says she quickly ​“came to love helping people, hearing their stories, forming long term connections with my family practice patients, and helping them feel at ease in the OR and ER settings.” She says her favourite part of practising medicine is getting work with ​“so many other amazing and caring individuals”. She is proud to work with an incredible team of physicians, nurses, and support staff, and says most days it feels like she is ​“hanging out with my friends while we work together to help others feel better.” 

Patient Rachel Templeton says Dr. Felsch is ​“the epitome of caring” and the best physician she has ever had, adding ​“she goes above and beyond the call of duty and is an excellent communicator.” Ms. Templeton credits Dr. Felsch with improving her quality of life and even helping her live longer, adding ​“she is funny, approachable, down to earth, and makes me feel seen and heard.”

Like many of our members and Manitobans, Dr. Felsch is very concerned about the overall staffing shortage in healthcare. With nursing, mental health and many other areas stretched worrisomely thin, Dr. Felsch is heartbroken to see the long wait lists and not be able to give all patients the care that they need. 

Still relatively new to practice, Dr. Felsch’s proudest professional accomplishment is the work she has been able to do in her role as Anesthesia Lead in Portage. She is an avid reader, loves doing anything outdoors, and biking to work with a good audio book. Her favourite activities are backcountry camping and paddle boarding. She credits her husband, Patrick, with being a great calming presence in her life since well before starting medicine. They have an 11 year old dog named Jasper. 

As a little girl Dr. Amanda Morris admired her grandfather who worked at the hospital. She thought he was a doctor because he fixed her childhood bumps and scrapes. Little did she know she would need to become the hospital janitor if she wanted to follow in his footsteps and be as loved and respected as he was. Dr. Morris did not consider medicine again until she lived in Salima, Malawi. She loved living at the Salima hospital and working at the HIV clinic. One day her neighbors came to her desk and said that the town had decided that she should become a doctor. That encouragement changed the trajectory of her life. 

Dr. Morris graduated from McMaster Medical School and completed her OBGYN residency here in Manitoba. With the support of her mentors she pursued fellowship in Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. She works at HSC as an OBGYN and specializes in pediatric and adolescent gynecology. She loves the variety her job brings: seeing little girls, pregnant people and older women in clinic, operating at Children’s and Women’s hospital and managing a busy labour floor throughout the night – her job is never boring! She loves empowering young people to really understand their bodies and take charge of their reproductive health. That education wasn’t available to her as a young person and is still not available to a lot of people. Children ask the best questions and really want to know the answers. She hopes that by explaining what is yet unknown she will inspire a ​“feminist army of young scientists set on making real strides in women’s health in the future.” One of Dr Morris’ health care concerns is lack of forward momentum in reproductive health and she feels that ​“in some areas it feels like the world is moving backwards.” Dr. Morris would love to see better use of technology and public policy to make access to contraception and STI testing results easily available to patients.

She is proudest of the little moments in her job: a salvaged ovary, inspiring curiosity in a resident, a kid’s confident smile as they leave the office, a postop patient finally feeling safe and healthy in their body, a new mom realizing how amazing and powerful they are. She says ​“these moments are incredible reminders of the privilege of my job.” Dr. Morris is a supportive team leader, and colleague Cheryl Nicholls calls her ​“an amazing human being” who makes learning fun when teaching medical learners. Cheryl is proud to be part of Dr. Morris’ team and commends her tireless efforts to advocate for her patients, adding, ​“she goes above and beyond to ensure her patients receive the care they need.” 

Dr. Morris loves canoeing adventures, horseback riding, playing piano and singing (and music in many forms), musical theatre and doing artistic and creative projects especially with her children.She has lived in many places in Canada. She was born in BC, grew up in Alberta, guided canoe trips in Northern Saskatchewan, completed med school in Ontario and now lives in Manitoba. She counts herself lucky to have experienced so many beautiful parts of this country. She has been married nearly 20 years to the love of her life and together they have 3 wonderful children. 

Dr. Carine Minders grew up and studied medicine in South Africa. After graduating in 2006 and completing a diploma in Child Health she found her passion in Family Medicine, joining her father in private group practice for a few years. On December 31, 2013 — the coldest day she had ever experienced in her lifetime — she immigrated to Brandon Manitoba with her parents, where she has since worked as a hospitalist. 

In 2015, she spearheaded the creation of the Brandon Trans Health Clinic, which was taken over by colleague Dr. Kelby Treloar in 2019. In 2016 she started the HIV clinic as a joint effort with the Winnipeg ID team and 7^th Street Access Clinic. With support from the HIV program in Winnipeg, Dr. Minders and Dr. Treloar provide care for HIV infected patients in the Prairie Mountain Health Region. Her work during the pandemic earned her and her colleague Dr. Liesel Möller the Brandon Regional Health Centre Staff Meritorious Award for 2021.

For Dr. Minders, medicine is like solving a puzzle and she appreciates the learning experience each patient provides. She loves her role as a hospitalist, caring for interesting and complex patients who have been admitted with a provisional diagnosis from the hospital ER. For her, earning the trust of these patients, who are often at their most vulnerable moment of their lives, is a privilege. Even when first meetings require delivering bad news to a patient, Dr. Minders says she sees her work ​“as an opportunity to impact or change patients’ lives as positively as I can even if the circumstances they find themselves in are grim.” She would recommend a career as a Hospitalist to learners who want to work in a dynamic environment, caring for patients across all demographics, covering broad diagnoses and treatment plans. 

Stressing that physicians cannot do it alone, Dr. Minders believes health care requires teamwork and she is grateful to be working with an incredible multidisciplinary team. The work she is doing is impacting people she has never even met. Early-to-practice, rural family physician, Dr. Melissa Bulloch had never met Dr. Minders when she began work in her first week as a hospitalist. Admittedly a bit anxious, Dr. Bulloch took over caring for Dr. Minders’ previous week’s patients and says the ​“incredible thoroughness in patient workup, documentation and patient plans made my transition to this new job much smoother than it would have been otherwise.” Dr. Minders’ detailed transfer notes showed that she had gone the extra mile, investigating any and every possible issue. With a personal invitation to call or text if there were any issues, Dr. Bulloch says she felt cared for and supported by a colleague she had never met. She and other colleagues working as hospitalists aspire to do so at the bar Dr. Minders has set. Dr. Minders strives to care for each of her patients with genuine concern, empathy, honesty and respect. 

Dr. Minders is deeply concerned about the doctor shortage that is leading to reduced access ​“to have the preventative health care and early interventions/​diagnostics that can ultimately improve overall health outcomes” and adds, ​“the lack of primary providers also results in inadequate management of chronic conditions, further contributing to poor health outcomes.” She has seen firsthand patients presenting to hospital with multiple complicated/​advanced health problems which were preventable if they had had access to a family doctor. She often feels dread when ​“having to discharge patients from hospital knowing they have no follow up plan or care” because they do not have a regular doctor.

Dr. Minders and her partner Lon, a police officer, have a four year old son, Callon. For fun, Dr. Minders sometimes writes poetry. The poem she shares below ​“challenges the concept of perfection.” She says, ​“We all try to be the ​“perfect mom”, the ​“perfect doctor”. What does perfect even mean?”

Perfection

In pursuit of meeting minimum standard
We seem to raise the bar
An inherent evolutionary drive
To lower the previous par.

And so we redefine our goals
But do we ever stop to question
Is this an infinite process
And can we surpass perfection?

Do we enter a divine dimension
When perfection seems inferior
And do we remain human
while becoming exceedingly superior? 

I decide to ask the expert
And knock softly, then open the door.
But I’m faced with the empty ruins
Of the person that was there before.

Old wrinkly face eroded by time;
Hair dry and bare;
Wilted posture; shrunken body;
Looking at me with a blank stare.

Has he reached his goals,
Or does he still dream at night
Of attaining his minimum standard,
Or has he given up the fight?

I realized in that moment
That this must be ​“perfection”!
It’s the absence of ​“minimum standard”,
Not the absence of imperfections. 

I hold his hand, and smile
Not sure what to say.
While sitting in his soiled diaper, he exclaims
​“What a perfect day!”

Raised in Gimli, Manitoba and a proud member of the Pimicikamak First Nation in Cross Lake, MB, Dr. Shelley Turner is a trailblazer in the medical cannabis community, specializing in cannabinoid therapies for addiction, sleep and mood disorders, and chronic pain. Providing empathic, patient-centered health care is in her blood. Before graduating from medical school and completing her Rural residency at McMaster University in 2008, she worked as an ambulance attendant in high school and was a nurse from 1987 to 2003. Since becoming a physician, Dr. Turner has worked with marginalized populations in Ontario and Manitoba. She has completed additional training at CAMH to provide opiate agonist treatment and is also trained to provide therapeutic Psilocybin and psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Dr. Turner says that ​“the ability to connect with people when they are at their most vulnerable and develop a bridge of trust and mutual respect is the most rewarding part of medicine.” She is proud when she can amplify the patient’s voice and measure progress over time. Colleague and friend Dr. Michele Matter says Dr. Turner is a passionate advocate for safe supply and harm reduction programs, adding ​“she is a wonderful physician and human, who truly believes in the concept of all-inclusive, wrap around care for patients with substance use and other disorders.”

Through her Cannabinoid Treatment clinical research Dr. Turner feels she is ​“adding to the very much needed data for providers and patients to make the best decisions regarding their treatment.” She is excited for the future of medicine, as research in the area of psychedelics for PTSD and chronic pain increases and is gaining support. In her work caring for patients with substance use issues, she has seen the devastating effects the toxic drug supply has had on Canadians, especially in the last few years. The opioid crisis has created professional challenges for physicians, and for some, has brought personal loss. In March of 2022, Dr. Turner lost her cousin to a toxic overdose. She believes that harm reduction is ​“a continuum and not absolutistic” and is very concerned ​“about the paucity of providers of opioid agonist therapy and the support required to provide this service with a complex population of people.”

A dog-lover her whole life, Dr. Turner’s dogs have always played an important role in her own life. Sadly, she recently lost her dogs Remi (15) and Myla (3), a rescued pug cross, who used to join Dr. Turner on clinic days. Proving the power dogs have to connect with people and provide comfort, Myla made tough and tearful appointments a bit more bearable for patients, by curling up on their feet or in their laps. 

In her spare time Dr. Turner loves to garden and take in live music. Her musical taste varies from Mozart to Miley Cyrus, and she gets motivated by listening to the Ukranian song Шум. She loves a good meme and will forward along the smiles to friends. While Dr. Turner loves good food and will ​“eat almost anything except blue cheese and liver,” her current favourite recipe is a red lentil coconut curry.