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Health Sciences
Students’ Association
Office of the Coordinator of Health Sciences
The University of British Columbia
G29-2194 Health Sciences Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3
Email: hssa@interchange.ubc.ca
Web: www.health-sciences.ubc.ca/hssa
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The above Companion Guide is a booklet designed and published by the Health Sciences Student Association of UBC. The Health Sciences Student Association is a non-profit student organization at UBC, and its members are students in each UBC health care faculty. The Companion Guide has become a crucial part of the HSSA Outreach Program, which is designed to introduce the health care programs taught at UBC to high school students. The goal of this outreach is to expose high school students to the variety of professions in healthcare beyond the narrow range of "doctors and nurses." It is our hope that high school students will become aware that there are a multitude of careers in healthcare, and that each of these individual professions works together to ensure the ultimate health of each patient.
The Companion Guide includes descriptions of each health care program taught at UBC with representation by the HSSA. There are also details on the pre-requisites for each program, so that high school and university students who are interested in applying to a UBC program will know which courses must be taken before applying. We have also tried to provide information on the career outlook for each profession, including a representative sample of available jobs after graduation, and future career outlook.
If you are interested in further information about a specific program, please visit that UBC's website (listed below). If you are a high school or university teacher, health care professional, or are otherwise interested in this or other HSSA projects, the HSSA can be contacted here:
Finally, I'd like to publically thank an individual and friend who was the key figure in the production and publishing of the HSSA Companion Guide, the HSSA past-president Nima Tabloei. The Companion Guide was my original concept, but it was Nima's vision and enthusiam for the project that made it a reality. The Companion Guide has been a tremendous success since its introduction to local high schools. We have since branched further in the distribution of the Companion Guide. In the past year, Nima and I have worked together to secure an arrangement with the Volunteer Resources department of the Vancouver Health Sciences and Hospital Center to distribute the Companion Guide to local Vancouver hospital volunteers, many of whom are high school and university students.
Another ground-breaking achievement was a funding partnership with the Community-Based Rural Training Program through the Department of Family Practice in the UBC Faculty of Medicine. This partnership resulted in the distribution of 600 Companion Guides to 50 towns and communities throughout British Columbia, using the UBC medical school Class of 2003's summer rural BC elective as the vehicle to reach these cities. We hope that this will raise awareness of training opportunities at UBC to rural communities, and hopefully lead to increased applications and representation of rural students in UBC's health care programs, as there is an ever-increasing shortage of all health care practioners in rural BC.
None of these programs, nor the Companion Guide itself would have been a reality without Nima's energy and tireless work ethic. Thank you, from me and all of the other HSSA members for all of your work, vision and guidance.