Meet Katie, the whirlwind from Nelson, BC, whose journey from nursing to medicine reads like an action-packed sitcom script. Starting out in medical and emergency nursing in the Kootenays, she decided to take the plunge and pursue an MD at the height of Covid. Despite having just finished building their dreamhouse, she uprooted the family, dragging her partner, kids, dog, and cat across the country to Waterloo, Ontario. Amidst 24 hour call shifts and feverishly reviewing notes, she made the questionable decision to add a third child to her brood, who probably holds the record for youngest medical student, attending his first class at just 6 hours old.
As someone who invites chaos into all aspects of her life, Katie further fell in love with Emergency Medicine and decided to ignore her status as a geriatric medical student to pursue the FRCPC EM program. I guess those many hours watching ER and Grey’s Anatomy really did pay off.
When she’s not reviving her exhausted partner or corralling her feral children, Katie finds solace in mountain hikes and lake swims, accompanied by her trusty pup, Lennox. Forever pining for BC, her return for emergency medicine training was a triumphant homecoming. She has fully embraced Island life and can be heard referring to the “mainland” like any true islander.
Catch her if you can between shifts, but good luck keeping up with this caffeine-fueled dynamo in scrubs. You might overhear her saying her moto is “surviving, not thriving” but we think she’s making it look easy.
.