New-to-practice, Dr. Sahil Chawla looks back on Division’s “always available” resident support
Dr. Sahil Chawla grew up with doctors who have become some of the major influences in his life and his decision to become a physician.
With almost a year into his family practice in Abbotsford, Chawla has found passion in regenerative medicine and helping provide some relief to the community’s senior population.
“My family members and the patients that I’m supporting are aging,” says Chawla. “We can keep treating them with conventional medicines or we can also learn these new techniques and find out how we can provide newer and better experiences for our patients.”
An Abbotsford resident since birth, Chawla is deeply connected to this community and was excited when he matched to Abbotsford for his residency program.
“This is home for me. It’s the only place I’ve known for the longest time,” he says.
Chawla was among the more recent batch of resident doctors to come out of the Abbotsford Resident Engagement program, an initiative by the Abbotsford Division of Family Practice that aims to help resident doctors successfully transition into family practice.
“The Division was always available to us,” he recalls. “When we had questions about what kind of resources were available in the community, they were always there to support us as residents.”
Abbotsford Division’s Resident Engagement program delivers an array of services designed with resident experience in mind. They include one-to-one practice transition meetings, resident education events, ample and uninterrupted space for R2 study nights, financial bootcamps and appreciation events.
One of the most valuable program features that stood out for Chawla was the business-related resources provided by the Division as residents transitioned into practice.
“The last four, plus two, years of the medical program, we were just focusing on medicine. We were not really focused on the business side of things, like how to negotiate contracts or what to look out for. The Division was really beneficial in that regard.”
These resources, he adds, has helped set up residents for success and armed them with the essential knowledge needed to set up their practice.
The program also helped connect residents with resources and doctors in the community who provided guidance on a variety of practice-related questions, such as what practice paths to pursue or how to better understand referral patterns.
For Chawla, his “dream-come-true” was not just graduating from med school, but getting to practice in his hometown, where his family, community and his professional and personal role models are, including Dr. Harajit Lail who delivered him as a baby; Dr. Manjit Gosal, Chawla’s karate sensei who wrote his reference letter to get into med school and helped guide him into choosing family medicine; and Dr. Ashish Grover who was a big part of Chawla’s residency experience.
Beyond his role models, Chawla found the medical community in Abbotsford very supportive, especially to residents and new practitioners.
“They want to teach you how you can get to where they are. They’ll talk you through the different paths that they took. You ask someone a question, and they open their arms up to really welcome you and walk you through the whole path.”
Now, as an attending doctor in his own practice, Chawla gets to work with a variety of patients and conditions.
“Whether I am helping them through a traumatic case or stress-related issue, or seeing a pregnant patient, I get to see all the vast modalities and vast presentations of family medicine all in a single day,” he says.
Looking ahead, Chawla aims to continue to build his knowledge in regenerative medicine and pursue new treatment modalities that are emerging across the world.
“What I envision in the next 10 to 15 years is that Abbotsford is going to be the town of innovation in medicine, where we can be competitive with Vancouver when it comes to bringing all the newest tools here,” Chawla says.
The Resident Engagement program is a key strategic priority for the Abbotsford Division of Family Practice, supporting our vision of equitable, team-based care delivered by dedicated and thriving health-care providers. This work is guided by our four strategic pillars: creating a place to grow, helping physicians thrive, building the right relationships, and fostering connection and belonging.