香蕉视频

Just last month, Cristina Longo successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled 鈥淭reatment Considerations and Prescribing Issues for Obese Children with Asthma,鈥� making her the first ad hoc PhD graduate of the Department of Family Medicine of 香蕉视频. We sat down with her, as well as her long-time supervisor, Dr. Gillian Bartlett.

Born with a flair for research and a desire to help people in the field of medicine, Cristina first embarked on the academia train as an undergraduate student in physiology. 鈥淎lthough I loved how research-based the program was, I felt like I was spending too much time in the laboratory [鈥�] I needed to work with people鈥�, she explains.

Although she originally had her heart set on medical school, with her volunteering at the Montreal Children鈥檚 Hospital, she got the chance to meet Dr. Gillian Bartlett and the world of health research beckoned. One could say the rest is history.

If you would have asked Cristina if the mere thought of pursuing graduate studies in family medicine at McGill had crossed her mind during her undergraduate years, the answer would have been no 鈥� as a matter of fact, the program did not exist at the time.

The Department of Family Medicine recruited Dr. Bartlett in 2005 in order to work on increasing the research capacity, which eventually lead to the creation of the master鈥檚 program in family medicine. Cristina, among six other students, was part of the first cohort of the program.

鈥淲e always had strong overlapping interests鈥�, says Dr. Bartlett. She supported Cristina when she wanted to get additional work experience after the completion of her master鈥檚 degree. Nonetheless, Cristina put her unique training to practice as a the project coordinator of a participatory research project 鈥� the Living Lab, a program engaging with multiple actors in the Greater Montreal Area, such as the Centre for interdisciplinary research in rehabilitation of Greater Montreal (CRIR), to improve community accessibility.聽

The Living Lab paired researchers, community and the administration of the Alexis Nihon Complex, located in Westmount, to enhance renovations and improvements that ranged from structural changes to providing accessibility-based training for employees to make the environment friendlier to those with any types of impairments.

Whilst working on this project, this only reinforced Cristina鈥檚 will to move forward in her academic journey. 鈥淲hat I like so much about the research is that it is never habitual [鈥�] there will always be questions left to be answered鈥�, she says.

It was only a question of timing. Five years after receiving accreditation for the master鈥檚 program, the Department of Family Medicine had put in a request to develop a PhD program and submitted it for accreditation. This became another first for Cristina, who enrolled in the ad hoc program without hesitation.

When asked if the creation of such a program had been challenging, Dr. Bartlett considers the challenge to be the essence of our environment.聽 鈥淚n academia, we strive for challenges鈥�, she explains. Though the process has been a learning experience, she thinks Cristina is an excellent example and a quite successful role model 鈥� she has in fact been awarded an extremely competitive post-doctoral fellowship, the Marie Curie RESPIRE-3 to train in Europe, in addition to a FRQ-S Postdoctoral Award.

Before making the jump to Europe in a few months, Cristina will also be doing a post-doctoral program at the Universit茅 de Montr茅al with Dr. Lucie Blais. 鈥淭here are no holes in academia鈥�, she observed.

On that note, things are also growing larger at the Department of Family Medicine. As of the fall of 2018, the ad hoc PhD program will boast over 40 trainees, while the master鈥檚 program has 45 students.

鈥淕iven the training we offer, it is not a surprise鈥�, Dr. Bartlett noted. For the time being, she says the Department will have to look at re-organizing the administrative support and space in order to meet the ongoing interest demand for research training in family medicine and primary care.