If you ask Dr. John Hagens how he was named the Family Physician of the Year, he’ll tell you he was just taking one for the team.
Hagens works four days a week teaching residents and medical students at the South Health Campus and works one day per week at Okotoks Urgent Care.
“It is a patient nominated award,” said Michael Spady, clinical department head for the Department of Family Medicine. “The selection committee goes through them. We look at their career as a whole.”
Ninety nominations were received this year.
Hagens was working with his wife at a clinic in High River when he was offered the job teaching at the South Health Campus. Around 60 per cent of his patients followed him into the city.
“Since he joined the teaching team at the South Health Campus he’s been highly involved with the teaching team and he continues to see his patients,” Spady said. “He is a very kind, gentle and quiet kind of person. He is well loved by his patients and colleagues.”
Hagens said the people he works with are just as deserving of recognition.
“I have really amazing colleagues here,” he said. “I don’t feel I was doing anything different than my colleagues here or in Okotoks.”
Hagens said is the face patients see the most, but there is a team of people who are just as instrumental.
“For example, I had a patient that had a lot of complex medical care issues,” Hagens said. “They couldn’t afford medications. We helped them with issues of diabetes and obesity. We helped with all of those issues.
“They were very grateful to me because of how much their life had changed and how much better they are feeling. But I looked at that file and there were notes from the dietician, the social worker, product control nurse, the academic pharmacist. In urgent care there are the lab technicians, x-ray technicians, the emergency nurses. I couldn’t do that job without them.”
Hagens started out his career in Yellowknife and moved to working at the High River Hospital urgent care in 2003. Right before the 2013 flood Hagens moved to working at the South Health Campus, but was one of several staff at High River Hospital who wrote a letter to the Province to fully re-open the facility. All the while Hagens was dealing with his own home being flooded.
“There was nine feet of water,” he said. “This week we are getting the last of our furniture. Its finally over.”
Through all the changes and ups and downs, Hagens said his commitment has remained to keep his patients informed so they can be involved in making decisions for their health and wellbeing.
“It’s always important to me that our patients feel heard,” he said. “That they have a voice in the care you receive.”
In the end he said he’s the lucky one to be able to make a difference in people’s lives.
“What I really enjoy about clinical care is the relationship with patients and sharing that journey along with them and their lives and their family,” he said. “Those personal issues that they have in their lives – it’s a real privilege to be in our position.”
