Caitlin Harmon MD CCFP

William M. Glenn

Dr Caitlin Harmon’s earliest memories of growing up on British Columbia’s beautiful Sunshine Coast involve either sailboats or, perhaps surprisingly, maternity wards.

“We would be out doing our grocery shopping or some other errand when Mom would get paged. One of her patients was in labour,” Dr Harmon recalls. “We’d rush over to the hospital and while Mom was delivering the baby, my sisters and I played in the waiting room—racing wheelchairs and giggling with the nurses—until my father finished work for the day at a local elementary school and came to collect us. But before we left, I always asked to visit the nursery and see the new baby.”

Today Dr Harmon has plenty of opportunity to see babies. A family doctor at the new Grow Health family, maternity, and pediatric care clinic in Victoria, BC, she has already delivered at least 100 herself and assisted with more than 120 C-sections. She also spends a lot of time in the labour and delivery ward with the medical students and residents she teaches. And, of course, she was there for the birth of her own daughter, Julia, who turned 1 this past December.

Dr Harmon works 2 days a week at the family-friendly clinic, plus a 24-hour shift each week at the nearby Victoria General Hospital, handling both her own maternity and newborn patients and those of the other 7 physicians on the Grow Health team. “My practice is about 50% family medicine and 50% maternity work,” she says. “We provide complete prenatal, intrapartum, and postpartum care. And if they are not already part of our family practice, many of those mothers and babies join us … followed, more often than not, by the fathers and even the grandparents.”

Every 2 or 3 months she does a locum—either out on one of the Gulf Islands or at a small community in the interior—and takes along her daughter, her mechanical engineer husband, Trevor, and sometimes even her dad, Roger, now retired from teaching. “The most important thing for me is balancing work and family,” Dr Harmon says. “I’ll go out on an emergency call and then come home for dinner with my family before being called away for, maybe, a delivery or another home visit.”

And when not fulfilling her childhood ambition of delivering babies, Dr Harmon likely can be found at sea on her family’s 50-foot sailboat, the Enchanted. “When we were kids, we spent all summer in life jackets sailing around the Gulf Islands with Dad … and Mom too when she could get away,” she says. These days, she and her family spend many weekends on the water year-round and get away for an additional week or 2 whenever they can coordinate their schedules.

“We sleep on the boat, wade through tidal pools, and spit watermelon seeds off the stern,” Dr Harmon says. “Sun, rain, wind, even snow, I love life on the water. And the BC coast is the perfect place for sailing, for working, and for raising a family.

“The most important thing for me is balancing work and family”

PHOTOS (LEFT): Dr Harmon hanging her daughter’s artwork on the wall of her office at Grow Health (above) and examining one of her pregnant patients (left). Dr Harmon and her mother, Dr Beverly Pace, out for a walk (right).

PHOTOS (RIGHT): Dr Harmon enjoying a sunny sail to Sidney Spit, BC, with her daughter, Julia; husband, Trevor; niece, Isabella; sisters Beverly, Laura, and Charlotte; and dad, Roger (above). (From top, down) Dr Harmon in the office with 2 of her 7 physician colleagues at Grow Health, Drs Alicia Power and Juliane Reimer. Dr Harmon sailing with Julia, Roger, Beverly, Laura, Charlotte, Isabella, and nephew, Rocco. Dr Harmon at the helm and at Willows Beach with Julia and Trevor.

Footnotes

Dr Harmon is a family physician at the Grow Health clinic in Victoria, BC, practising full-spectrum family medicine including maternity care at Victoria General Hospital.
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.