For Alexandra (Ali) Barras, being a good family physician is about more than the well-being of individual patients. It is also about the health of entire communities.
“I see my future as being a family physician in rural Canada, but not just a physician for individuals,” says Barras. “I also want to affect change at the community level and use my public health skills for projects and initiatives to improve health in communities.”
It is a goal that very much mirrors the diverse range of experiences she has had during her journey to becoming a physician.
Barras (BSc ’14, Health Studies) recently graduated from medical school and has started a residency in family medicine in Lethbridge. Along the way, she has worked on international health projects in Tanzania and Bolivia.
At Waterloo, she was also an athletic administrator and student engagement officer and became a student program lead for the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, a role in which she created a steroid education program. As a health promotion facilitator in Alberta, she worked on a suicide prevention training program.
The road to becoming a physician has been winding, but she says all these eclectic positions are tied together by the theme of improving the well-being of communities.
She made a conscious decision to seek out diverse co-op experiences rather than just focus on getting the high academic grades to get into medical school. “I didn’t want to give up all the amazing experiences that came with co-op,” Barras says.
One of her co-op positions took her to Tanzania, where she created content for the HIV/AIDS education program developed by an organization called Art in Tanzania.
Much to learn
“I learned so much from the people there,” she says. “That sparked me to also do a minor in international development at Waterloo. I just realized how little I knew and how much more there was to learn.” In Health Studies at Waterloo, students learn about the social determinants of health, “but to actually see them in practice was an important learning experience,” she adds.
While doing her master’s in Alberta, she also went to Bolivia for four months, where she worked for an organization that was developing a strategy for food sovereignty and school breakfast programs in rural areas. “That was an amazing experience and I felt that based on what I had learned at Waterloo, I was able to provide some assessment tools and contribute to that organization,” she says.
During her medical studies, she continued work on the suicide prevention project for the Alberta government. That too contributed to her skills as a physician. “To be able to support people through those difficult points in their lives is something that I am passionate about, both as a physician and as a person.”
She was in the final year of her medical school program when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “That forced us to become more creative in terms of how we see patients, be it virtually, or talking to them on the phone,” she says.
Active listening
Barras says throughout all these experiences, she gained the most important skill that a physician can have, which is active listening. “I really enjoy that aspect of allowing people to tell their stories. That is one of the main reasons for wanting to get into family medicine. I really enjoy listening to people and I think that in our technology-driven world, with screens on all the time, we don’t listen enough.”
She wants to integrate all of these skills to help communities deal with broader issues that affect health, such as assisting those experiencing homelessness.
“I see myself as being part of a community and being a resource for the community,” she says of the future impact she hopes to have. “I want to be able to see a need and figure out how to address that need.”
