Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care may have a baby in Nepal to thank for its Medical Director of Integrated Care.
These days, Dr. Becky Van Iersel can be found overseeing the physical health needs of hundreds of patients within the organization.
As a girl of 10 or 11, though, she lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, where her father worked as an engineer. She often accompanied her mother on volunteer shifts at a free clinic for women and children.
“I would go in on my days off and write up name cards for patients,” she recalled. “I remember loving that environment and working with the nurses.”
To this day, she still thinks about a malnourished baby whose mother walked three days to see a doctor. Over the course of a few weeks, the clinic team carefully brought the child back to health.
“I have a picture of myself feeding that baby a bottle later on when it was chubby and thriving again. I remember thinking, ‘This is really cool. I like medicine.’ From that moment, I wanted to be a physician.”
Returning to Canada, she attended Queen’s University and earned a degree in life sciences before entering medical school. During a residency in Orillia, Dr. Van Iersel fell for the little city on Lake Simcoe, operating a practice there for about 10 years.
She spent four years with the North Simcoe Muskoka Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), but the LHINs were dissolved in 2019. And then the pandemic hit.
“I went back into more full-time clinical work at Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital,” she said. “I was the COVID unit lead and then chief of family medicine.”
That was when she was contacted about a position at Waypoint. Familiar with both Chief of Staff Dr. Kevin Young and President and CEO Dr. Nadiya Sunderji, Dr. Van Iersel knew she wanted to be here.
As one of four standalone specialized mental health and addictions hospitals in Ontario, Waypoint serves some of the province’s most complex and disadvantaged populations. Dr. Van Iersel arrived in June 2022 to head up a team that includes family doctors, hospitalists, physician assistants, an internist and a nurse practitioner.
Working here has given her a chance to be part of something remarkable. Dr. Van Iersel said the team has been able to improve the management of alcohol withdrawal at Waypoint, support the ability of physician assistants to work at full scope, and provide medical care for patients who would previously have been transferred to other hospitals, which means their specialized psychiatric care can continue at Waypoint while their medical needs are met.
“I can take my time with people to understand the nuances and complexities of their lives,” she said. “In the last two years, I have felt the most supported, the most connected to my patients and the least amount of burnout in my career.”