We had an opportunity to visit Karen near her home in Halfmoon Bay, BC, this past spring, and are excited to share some of that conversation here.  

Lifetime Achievement Award

Dr. Karen Forgie

After beginning her medical career as a nurse practitioner, midwife, and outpost nurse in Newfoundland and Labrador, Karen was drawn to the Westcoast where she landed as a Resident in 1991 and decided to stay. Over the past 30 years Karen has risen to take on leadership roles in both medicine and her community.

From the beginning Karen sought out experience in rural medicine, fuelled by her sense of adventure and her love for smaller communities and an opportunity to provide a variety of care. From obstetrics to emergency, long term care, inpatient care, palliative care and anything else that came her way, Karen was attracted to the diversity, the sweat and the quick pivot which rural family practice provides.

At the provincial level, Dr. Forgie was elected to the role of President of BC Family Doctors (BCFD) during a momentous time as the organization transitioned from being known as the Section of General Practitioners (SGP) to BC Family Doctors. This also culminated in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia acknowledging family physicians as specialists in primary care—a recognition that Dr. Forgie advocated for decades.

Currently the chair of the BCFD economics committee, Karen continues to lead by pursuing the modernization of the family practice fee-for-service payment schedule. She has also served as a representative on the Worksafe BC negotiating committee and helped create updated forms and processes that reflect the workflows of actual family physicians in practice. She created and led billing education sessions on LFP and will do similar for the upcoming fee-for-service work.

“After over 30 years of working in rural communities, I’ve felt that I do know the things that communities need, what they need to grow, what they need to have to improve their health care, and what physicians need to be able to provide health care. I always thought that was someone else’s job. But over the last ten or so years, I’ve started to become involved in organizations that try to improve our health care. I realized as time has gone on that I do have some input, some knowledge, and some skills in this area. And I would say that one of the biggest things that I would recommend to my colleagues is that they need to find a little place where they can lead too because their interests, their knowledge, is valuable.”