Double dose of med school

Not everyone enters medical school with a built-in study buddy.

Sisters Maya and Dana Jalal joined 135 of their classmates to don white coats and mark the beginning of their journey through the University of Manitoba’s Max Rady College of Medicine Wednesday morning.

Maya, 22, and Dana, 21, were accepted into medical school at the same time.

“Thankfully, we both got accepted in the same area, same time. So we decided we’d rather go together than apart,” Maya said. “It’ll be nice seeing different perspectives during our studies. We are siblings, but we each have our own perspectives, our own lived experiences.”

Growing up in Winnipeg as visible minorities in a Muslim family, the sisters have seen first-hand the barriers in the health-care system, which they hope to do their part in breaking down as medical professionals.

“We see how sometimes patients get dismissed because the doctors don’t understand the language they speak. So me and my sister have worked in clinics just translating for our community. But it’s not just for our community, you want to do this for all communities,” Dana said.

The inaugural day ceremony was held at the Centennial Concert Hall for the second time, so it could accommodate a larger number of people since the province increased the number of incoming medical students to 140 seats.

The ceremony comes on the heels of the province announcing it had hired close to 5,000 net-new health-care workers since taking office in 2023, including 370 doctors.

The NDP made a 2023 election promise to hire 400 physicians to help “fix” the health-care system’s chronic understaffing.

Michael Benarroch, the president and vice-chancellor of the U of M, called the Max Rady College one of the greatest medical schools in the world, and told the incoming students they would receive education on par with ivy-league campuses like Harvard University.

“This university will train you in the best medical education in the world, but it will also train you to care for people in reciprocity and respect, and that’s especially important as we work to address inequities in health care. When you graduate in a few years time, we need you to continue to lead change,” he told the class at the ceremony.

Members of the Class of 2030 includes 11 Indigenous students and 51 students with rural attributes, meaning they have rural roots or rural work, volunteer or leadership experience.

Five French-speaking students are enrolled in the bilingual stream.

Speaking through tears, Taylor Tutkaluke, 27, said she wants to help break down barriers Indigenous people face in the health-care system.

“When you look out at our class and, knowing there’s only a couple of Indigenous people here, it can feel like a lot of pressure,” Tutkaluke said. “But I know we know that we have the strength of all of our community behind us, and we’ve all been taught many different teachings and lessons that have allowed us to get here today.”

Tutkaluke is Métis with Slovenian roots and says the different experiences and lessons she learned from both sides of her family have helped shape who she is.

If all goes her way, Tutkaluke plans to enter family medicine and split her time between Winnipeg and rural and northern Manitoba communities.

As for the Jalal sisters, they aren’t sure which field they want to enter, but they aren’t ruling out anything — including working together in the future.

“We recognize that medicine is full of ‘what ifs’ so we don’t want to set any plans, but it would be amazing,” Maya said.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca