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A new medical school in Brampton, Ont., has started training a new generation of family physicians to address a major doctor shortage in Canada, but educators hope they will also better reflect the people they’re helping.
The idea behind Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Medicine is to train doctors who know more about their patients — from language, to culture and even traditional diets — so they can better serve their health needs without worrying about that advice getting lost in translation.
“It’s so exciting to be able to do something I’m so passionate about and do it in the city that I’ve grown up in,” Gurleen Kaur Chahal of Brampton, one of the school’s first-year medical students, told White Coat, Black Art host Dr. Brian Goldman.
Chahal, 25, is hoping to make it easier for families like hers to navigate the health-care system in Canada — one that “still honours and respects their dignity” and their cultural background.
According to TMU, this is the first new medical school to open in the Greater Toronto Area in over 100 years. Of the 6,400 undergrad students who applied to the school, just 94 were accepted, said Dr. Teresa Chan, the school’s dean.
All of the students are Canadian and most are from Ontario, with the hope that many will choose to work in the surrounding area. Just over 100 medical residents also began training at the school in the summer.
Brampton is one of Canada’s most diverse and fastest growing cities. But it’s significantly under-resourced when it comes to health care.
The Ontario College of Family Physicians expects the number of people without a family doctor in Peel region alone — which includes Brampton, Mississauga and Caledon — to reach 430,000 by next year.
Chan says many medical school students and residents often have “a lot of allegiance to the community in which they train,” which can be cultivated further when community members “really cheer them on.”
“We’re hoping that a lot of them will stay, and the evidence has panned out that most places you know, where you train for residency is where you stay,” she said.
This has worked in other parts of the province. According to a 2024 report from the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM), more than half of their graduates since the first cohort in 2009 are practicing in Northern Ontario.
That’s the kind of path Chahal sees herself following. Starting at an early age, she had to help her South Asian immigrant family navigate the health-care system.
“It was taking them to the family physician or any doctor and just translating the symptoms that they were experiencing, or if my parents got a report from the doctor, taking the time to … kind of explain them in a way that they would understand best,” said Chahal, whose parents and grandparents speak Punjabi and have varying fluency with English.
While they may be generally comfortable with English as a second language, family members might need someone more fluent like Chahal to explain a doctor’s technical or nuanced medical advice, says Chahal’s mother, Sukhbinder Kaur Chahal.
“Gurleen or someone has to go with them to explain to them what they need [for] medication, and what the doctor’s saying needs to be translated. So they need someone with them all the time.”
A first look at Toronto Metropolitan University’s new school of medicine
Samah Osman, another first-year student at the school, had similar experiences growing up in London, Ont., after she and her family came to Canada as refugees from Sudan.
“It’s not ideal to have a child interpreting for a parent, because even though I spoke English, like, obviously I’m not a medical professional or a clinician, and so, you can always worry about the type of interpretation that’s happening.”
That role of family translator is also more than simply reading out a prescription form.
One of the most common discussions that comes up between a patient and family doctor — diet — might have the most potential cultural pitfalls.
If a doctor tells a patient to eat more red meat, but that person doesn’t eat beef because of their religious beliefs, it could create tension.
“If I go to an Indian doctor who knows my diet, who knows the culture, he would tell me, ‘OK, instead of red meat or instead of meat, have tofu, have paneer, have cheese.’ Something that he would know that we have on a daily basis,” said Sukhbinder Kaur Chahal.
TMU gearing up to welcome 1st class at new Brampton medical school
Cultural gaps can have traumatic potential, as well.
Goldman recalled an earlier moment in his career where he had to tell a young grandchild that their grandparent had cancer, because the younger family member was the only one present who spoke English.
“It’s awkward and cruel and it’s something that shouldn’t be done,” Goldman said.
Lack of cultural sensitivity can lead to events like last year, when Brampton hospital workers shaved a Sikh man’s beard without his consent, in violation of his religious beliefs. Ontario health system leaders apologized and pledged action to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
In a statement to CBC News, the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) underscored the importance of community-based family medicine to help address the more than six million Canadians who don’t have access to a family doctor, who provide “more than half of all medical care” in the country.
Dr. Nancy Fowler, the CFPC’s executive director for academic family medicine, says residency training programs across the country prepare doctors to meet patient needs, “including attention to equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility and Indigenous health.”
Dr. Arun Garg, the program medical director for South Asian Health Institute at Fraser Health in B.C., says before TMU’s new school, he’d never seen a medical school with such a strong focus on fostering culturally sensitive care.
“It makes a lot of sense,” he said. “I think it’s really needed.”
Throughout his career, Garg has worked to highlight the need for culturally sensitive care — particularly how chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension were higher in South Asians, who make up a large part of B.C.’s population.
At the school’s opening ceremony earlier this month, Chahal confessed that while the high expectations she and her classmates face are somewhat nerve-racking, the support from family and friends reinforces how important the work really is.
“I feel like just trying to live in the moment and enjoy all of these new experiences,” she said. “But I mean, ask me when I’m writing my first exam and my answer will probably be different.”
