Joys of family medicine revealed in new book by local doctors
Lisha Van Nieuwenhove
“Let’s draw up the Epi dose - it’s 0.22 mg, so 2.2 mls of the cardiac epi so it’s ready to go if we have PEA.”
Dr. Jenn Wilson and Dr. Carlye Jensen, co-authors of Family Rooms: Inside Family Medicine. Photo by Erika Jensen-Mann, from familyrooms.ca
This may sound like a line from the popular HBO Max series The Pitt, but it isn’t. It’s a line uttered by a local doctor in the Uxbridge Hospital’s emergency room, shared in a new book by that doctor and her colleague.
Family Rooms: Inside Family Medicine, is an intimate, first-hand account of what life is like working as a family medicine specialist in a rural setting. Two Uxbridge doctors, Dr. Jenn Wilson and Dr. Carlye Jensen, share glimpses into how they deal with, as the book jacket puts it, “dramatic, comic, and quietly devastating moments from decades of practice in their community and beyond.”
“We wanted to give insight to behind-the-scenes, to explain the why and how we do what we do,” explains Wilson.
Jensen and Wilson say they didn’t write Family Rooms to shed light on their own practices so much as to try and change the narrative about what family medicine is. They hope to change the perception in the general public that family medicine is all that is left for doctors do if they don’t pursue a specialty.
“Everyone knows about shows like The Pitt or Grey’s Anatomy, and they think that’s what being a doctor is, where all the excitement is,” says Jensen. “They don’t realize that practicing family medicine, which is now considered a specialty, right alongside cardiology or any other specialty, is just as amazing, if not better!”
The duo has worked alongside one another for 20 years in Uxbridge, and they say they are hoping to entice medical students into family medicine by showing them how rewarding and fulfilling it can be.
“We get to see the impact of our work on our patients and in the community,” says Wilson. “That’s why we aren’t burnt out, I think. We offer that continuity of care, and it’s so important to us and to our patients.”
Wilson and Jensen are hosting a book launch party at Mill Run Golf Course on Sunday, Sept. 27 from 2 - 5 p.m. There will be a brief reading from the book and there will be books on hand for purchase.