In 2025 The Rural BC Lifetime Achievement Awards recognizes four outstanding physicians including Dr. Bruce Hobson who, in his retirement, continues to share his wisdom, experience, and his leadership through his ongoing roles with UBC CPD, The Rural Coaching and Mentoring Program, and RCCbc.
We’re honoured to share this short interview with Dr. Hobson featuring his reflections from his years of rural practice in Powell River and his role as a leader, mentor, and community member.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Dr. Bruce Hobson
In his “refocused retirement” Dr. Bruce Hobson continues to make tremendous contributions supporting engagement and collaborations across health systems in rural BC, underscoring almost 40 years of rural practice in Powell River. RCCbc is excited to honour Bruce as one of four physicians selected for the 2025 Lifetime Achievement award.
Bruce has been a key member of the Medical Leadership at UBC’s Division of Continuing Professional Development (UBC CPD) serving in a variety of roles across the Division since 2012. Following his father’s footsteps into family practice on the Sunshine Coast, Bruce describes assisting in his father’s surgery as one of his greatest joys, while also having “delivered babies of babies of babies.”
From medical charts to coach’s clipboards, Powell River kept Bruce busy. “So not only practicing medicine, I was a softball coach, a baseball coach, a soccer coach for my kids, the ones that would let me coach them. And I really enjoyed that part of my life. I always say, when people talk about work-life balance, I say, well, in a rural community, there’s no such thing as a balance, a separation between life and work. You are what you do, and you do what you are.”
A career-long interest in education and leadership inspired his involvement with UBC CPD covering a breadth of topics including service to Scientific Planning Committees, developing curriculum addressing adverse childhood experiences, chronic disease and pain, team-based care, and mental health and substance use. Since 2018 Bruce has served as Senior Medical Lead on the Rural Coaching and Mentoring Program (CAMP), an initiative fostering peer connections to improve practice, increase confidence, and build rural connections. In 2024, thanks in part to Bruce’s leadership, the program was able to support more than 780 hours of coaching and mentor support to 130+ participants.
“Be curious“ says Bruce in his advice to colleagues still early in their careers, “say yes maybe a bit more often than you’d like, or that you should.”
