Newfoundland woman first female Inuit doctor

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A Newfoundland woman, Danika Edmunds, marked a milestone for Native grads this spring as the first woman of Inuit descent to earn a medical degree.

The 25-year-old woman took her place beside the other proud University of Alberta graduates in Edmonton and was joined at a luncheon later in the day by Noah Carpenter, Canada's only other Inuit doctor. He serves as a thoracic surgeon in Comox, B.C.

There's a severe shortage of Native medical doctors in Canada and Edmunds hopes to change that by encouraging other students to pursue medicine.

"I didn't grow up in an Inuit community but I had my father's stories and traditionsI still know myself that I'm Native and I hope that during my residency I can act as a role model to Native children because there is a need for Native people in health care," she says.

Edmunds is half-Inuit on her father's side of the family. She still has numerous relatives living in the remote Inuit community of Hopedale, Labrador where her father grew up. Others live a short seaplane ride away in Goose Bay.

Edmunds' parents, Al and Loretta, now live in Clarenville, Nfld., but it was during her father's teens he moved to a residential school in St. John's and then went on to get an engineering degree in Halifax.

Danika's grades throughout her undergraduate degree in science at St. John's Memorial University were so good she had three medical school offers to choose from.

"Many people find it difficult just to get in anywhere," she says. It was U of A's small class size and the emotional support she could receive from the facility's Native health care careers program which swayed her to Edmonton. She says one of the program's mandates is to increase the number of Native doctors.

An interest in medicine began to germinate during high school science classes.

"I wanted to do something where I was working with people and something that would benefit them. Medicine seemed to accomplish those things."

Her first summer of general practice will be hectic with a medical residency at the city's Royal Alexandra Hospital starting and her marriage planned for June.

She'll wed another medical student she met at the university who has already started his residency in orthopedic surgery. He's also from the Maritimes and there is a strong possibility, she says, they may end up practicing back home.

"If the opportunity was there (to serve in a Native community) I'd initially like to do that and if we moved back to the Maritimes there'd be a chance for that."