Alyssa Groves: 2024 RhPAP Rural Medical School Award recipient

Alyssa Groves can’t wait to get back to her roots in rural Alberta and begin building her own patient panel.
“People have been asking me how long until I will be a doctor and when I tell them it will be 4.5 years, they are fine to wait that long and want to be on my ‘list’,” shares Groves, a first year of medical school at the University of Calgary.
She is one of several medical students who were recently selected to receive the annual RhPAP Rural Medical School Award. The award provides a one-time contribution of $5,000 to assist with the student’s tuition, accommodation, living, and/or professional development expenses.
The 22-year-old grew up on a farm outside Champion, Alberta, 15 minutes south of Vulcan.
While Grove has been away from home for a few years completing her undergraduate in Lethbridge and now attending medical school in Calgary, she spends plenty of time back at home with family and friends. She would eventually like to practice as a rural family generalist in southern Alberta, having gathered experience shadowing in rural hospitals.
“I enjoy everything that we have been learning and I can not imagine focusing on only one thing for the rest of my career; I would miss everything else too much.”
Groves does have a passion for women’s health, however, and takes special interest in this area and hopes it can eventually be incorporated into her practice as a primary care physician rather than specialist.