Barrie’s Royal Victoria Hospital will be “growing” family physicians right in Simcoe County, thanks to a new partnership with the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine.

Starting June 2009, the RVH will become an official teaching hospital of the University of Toronto.

Officials announced Friday that the hospital will develop a Family Medicine Residency Program, to be run by a faculty of local doctors led by Dr. Stu Murdoch.

Janice Skot, RVH President and CEO, said the hospital will become a “living classroom.”

“It is at this hospital that they will receive their final training, work with our specialists and receive hands-on experience in a family medicine training unit and clinic,” she said. “And then, once they graduate, hopefully they will be hanging out their doctor shingle somewhere in our community.”

The program will be one of first Family Medicine Teaching Units outside of the GTA.

The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care has pledged $2.5 million in startup funding for the program.

Murdoch said the program will have four residents begin their practices in June 2009, and is expected to grow to 18 residents within four years.

“Residents will have their own family practices and for two years, they will have their own roster of about 300 patients and they will follow these patients for the entire two years,” he said. “When they graduate they will have the opportunity to start their practice with 300 patients.”

The residents will work alongside family doctors in a 10,000-square-foot family medicine teaching unit to be built on hospital property as part of the hospital’s Phase 1 expansion.

The state-of-the-art building will be attached to the main hospital through a tunnel and will include a resident’s lounge, a computer room and a lecture hall.

Residents starting in June 2009 will work from a temporary location until the unit is complete.

On Friday, Catherine Whiteside, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, welcomed the RVH to their medical network.

“Since the early 1980s we have trained 47 per cent of the family community docs in Ontario … here at the Royal Vic we know our students will be exposed to situations and scenarios that are unique to communities like Barrie.”

Skot said RVH officials hope the program will bring more family doctors to Barrie.

“I, like all of you, believe that if we can just get these students to spend some of their time in our community they will never want to leave.”