A small town girl at heart, Dr. Merrilee Brown set up practice in Port Perry in 1998, a stone’s throw from where she grew up in Bowmanville. She practices the breadth of Rural Family Medicine including obstetrical deliveries, emergency, surgical assist, hospital inpatient, urgent care, office procedures and home–based palliative care. In Port Perry, she has taught many residents, medical students, nursing, pharmacy and nurse practitioner students although she maintains that her students have taught her more than she has taught them!
During her medical student days in the class of Meds ’95 at the University of Western Ontario, Dr. Wayne Weston introduced her to the writings of Dr. Ian McWhinney and the existential joy of Family Medicine. During med school and residency at the University of Ottawa, she participated in Educating Future Physicians for Ontario (EFPO), a group dedicated to making medical education more responsive to community needs. EFPO nurtured her love for medical education and started her teaching career. With newly minted license in hand, she moved to Alberta to do locums. She started teaching Communication Skills to first year medical students at the University of Alberta where she was famous for baking gingerbread doctors! Soon after she won the heart of her Alberta boy (now husband), Steve Gray, the pair moved east to Port Perry, where Dr. Brown had trained as a resident.
She started teaching for the University of Toronto Family Medicine Residency Program in 2000 with rural-stream residents completing a full years’ training in Port Perry. Subsequently, she has taken over the supervision of 15-25 residents per year in the UofT Teaching Practices Program. Committed to ensuring residents are well prepared for rural family medicine, she coordinates SOO/exam preparation and weekly teaching rounds for the residents. In her spare time, she sings in her church choir, runs Teddy Bear Clinics at the local Fall Fair, makes baby food for her 10 month old daughter, Sophie and potty trains her 21/2 year old son, Alastair! She is humbled by her OCFP Teaching Award as she feels it is a great privilege to work with medical students and residents and to pass on to them her joy of family medicine.