Chestermere’s newest family doctor has come all the way from South Africa by way of Saskatchewan to practice medicine in our lakeside city at LakeMed Medical clinic
“I’m very happy with the practice I’m in,” said Dr. Mzikayise Tshatshela who joined the LakeMed Medical clinic a couple weeks ago.
“It’s just a great team,” he said.
Tshatshela came to Chestermere after practicing family medicine in Turtleford, Sask. for the past six years.
“I wanted to be in Alberta, really close to the university,” he said.
Tshatshela hopes to be working with the department of family medicine at the University of Calgary in the future.
Until then, he said he is enjoying working in and helping the community in Chestermere.
Tshatshela said that what he enjoys about being a family physician is the variety that comes with the job.
“It’s nice to be able to, within your field of specialty, to do different things,” he said.
“From simple to complex and you have to know how to deal with those,” said Tshatshela, “it keeps you on your toes.”
When working in the medical field, whether a nurse, doctor, or lab technician a practitioner spends a lot of time working with people.
“Family practice for me, it really made sense,” said Tshatshela, “with family medicine it was on place I was able to deal with the day to day things.”
Having graduated from medical school as a general practitioner in 2008 in South Africa, Tshatshela has seen his fair share of variety in his medical practice.
“In South Africa, there’s quite a lot of differences,” he said.
After graduation Tshatshela did everything from family practice to work in the emergency room before coming to Canada.
While the principals of medicine are the same whether one is in South Africa or Canada, the culture and ailments one sees are quite different.
“People are still people but of course you have to be culturally relevant,” he said.
“South Africa has a lot of trauma, so we get exposed to a lot of trauma be it from accidents or from violent crimes,” said Tshatshela, “and here there’s not so much of that.”
The cultural differences and the need to develop his bedside manner and soft skills have been the biggest challenge coming to Canada.
At Home in South Africa, Tshatshela was able to practice medicine in his own language, Xhosa, although he has no problem working in English here in Canada.
Once he received his license to practice in Canada, Tshatshela said that learning the culture was and developing his soft skills was the big challenge.
“You can be an excellent doctor but if you are not able to help those soft skills to engage with your patients properly and in a way that’s acceptable to them it will ruin everything,” he said.
“Some things I learned the hard way some able to learn by just observing,” said Tshatshela.
