Dr Jaco Kruger MD CCFP

William M. Glenn

There are few things more dreary than a drizzling, gray November day in East Sussex, England. Following graduation from medical school in South Africa, Dr Jaco Kruger had eagerly relocated to the United Kingdom—during apartheid it had been almost impossible to travel. Now he was regretting the move.

“I walked straight into the employment agency and asked for a medical position anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere … somewhere it was summer,” he says. Two weeks later, Dr Kruger was on a flight to Gisborne Hospital on the North Island of New Zealand. Over the next 8 years, there were stints with other hospitals and clinics, an air ambulance service, and finally a series of rural practices scattered across the country.

“I started in emergency medicine, but slowly realized the advantages that continuity brings. As I learned to be a GP, I finally found my niche,” says Dr Kruger. When his partner, John Macleod, took a job with Alaska Airlines in 2002, it was another long flight to Washington State followed by an even longer 3-year residency program in family medicine that would qualify him to practise in the United States.

Today, Dr Kruger calls Calgary home, operating a full-scope family practice in the Riley Park Primary Care Centre. “The emphasis is very different from my ‘hands-on’ medical school training,” he says. “As part of a multidisciplinary team, we take a more patient-centred approach. For example, if you’re suffering from mild depression, I don’t prescribe antidepressants. I book you an appointment for the next day with our psychologist just down the hall.”

In booming Calgary there are lots of opportunities to work as much or as little as he wants. Currently that’s 6 half-days a week, with the occasional shift in the clinic of a downtown homeless shelter. “It’s all about balance these days,” Dr Kruger says. “If I try to do too much, it wears me down.”

So, where’s the next port of call on the doctor’s professional bucket list?

“At some point, the focus shifts a little bit,” Dr Kruger muses. “Instead of the next trip, the next job, the next assignment, it all mellows down into something simpler.” Sitting at his desk, he gazes out the window at the snow-shrouded Rocky Mountains. The broad Elbow River slowly loops below. It’s a stunning day.

“Before he died last year, that’s where we used to walk our big black Lab, Boytjie. They love to swim, you know.” He smiles. “Instead of an airline ticket, maybe we’ll get another dog.”

“It’s all about balance these days”

PHOTOS (LEFT): Dr Kruger at home in Calgary, Alta (top and left). Dr Kruger with his partner, John Macleod, and their dog, Boytjie (right; photo submitted by Dr Kruger). Boytjie means “small son” in Afrikaans.

PHOTOS (RIGHT): Dr Kruger on some of his adventures (top left; photos submitted by Dr Kruger). Boytjie the black Lab out and about (centre; photo submitted by Dr Kruger). Dr Kruger with his partner, John (bottom left; photo submitted by Dr Kruger). Dr Kruger reading at home (top).

Footnotes

Dr Kruger works at the Riley Park Primary Care Centre, a primary care network–run clinic in Kensington, an inner-city neighbourhood in Calgary, Alta.
THE COVER PROJECT Canadian Family Physician has embarked on a project to assemble the portrait of family medicine in Canada. Each cover of the journal features a family physician chosen at random from our membership list, along with a short essay—a brief glimpse of the person and the practice. Over time, the randomness will become representative and the differences, taken together, will define what it is that all family physicians have in common.