"Things are messy-people have different experiences, different strengths and different weaknesses. The key aspect is knowing how to capitalize on that so that you can work efficiently and well in a team setting," Douglas Cheung says, smiling as he recounts a standout moment from this education.
Although this may seem like a lesson he channeled in a clinic exam or interdisciplinary health sciences class, Cheung was far from the wards: he was participating in a case competition for MBA students.
On June 5, Cheung will cross the stage of the Jubilee Auditorium to accept a combined MD/MBA. The degree, jointly offered by the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry and the Alberta School of Business, gives medical students the opportunity to take a one-year hiatus from medical school to gain business education that Cheung calls "invaluable."
"The MBA really allowed me to fill that missing gap that I saw in my medical education," he says. "There are always opportunities for leadership, to get involved and use the different skills you gained in the MBA."
Finance, leadership and problem solving are a few of the skills that Cheung honed during his time as business student. He also enjoyed some exposure that he otherwise would have missed in the pure medical curriculum, including his capstone project: this comprehensive assignment challenged Cheung to apply everything he had learned during his MBA to a real-world scenario, working with and assessing Alberta Health Services' clinical information systems. During the assignment, he had a chance to work with a senior vice-president and other leadership in AHS. "You don't get that experience and that exposure anywhere else," he says.
Working with provincial health authorities is exactly the exposure Cheung was hoping for when he enrolled into the combined degree program. He has an interest in working in administration and health policy-two aspects of medicine that are not as prevalent in the medical curriculum as he initially hoped. This led him to take several business electives in public sector leadership. "You do a number of core courses, but you also have a lot of options and electives," he says of the curriculum. "It's an advantage being able to tailor that experience to what you want to do."
What Cheung wants to do is a bit of surprise even to him: soon he will begin the University of Toronto's five-year urology residency program. As a first-year medical student, he thought he would follow in his father's footsteps and become a pediatrician, but a phone call from his brother, then a University of British Columbia medical student fresh out of a urology rotation, opened his eyes to new possibilities. "'Doug, this rotation is you. You need to do an elective in urology,'" Cheung laughs, recalling the urgency in his brother's voice that prompted him to book the elective.
"Some people know, and some people need help finding their passion," he says. After the first elective in urology with Keith Rourke in the Department of Surgery, Cheung was hooked, but he knows that his future will hold more than clinical work.
"I love working with patients and helping them out, but there's only so many patients you can see on a day-to-day basis. Your clinics hours are limited by the number of hours in a day. When you have the opportunity to change policies, you can make a positive change for many of the others that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise" he says. "I think the MBA has set me on the path and armed me with some of the tools I need to get there."