WONCA Five Star Doctor Awards 2010
Article originally published in the December 2010 edition of WONCA News, republished online in August 2025.
Read an interview with Dr Sonia Roache here, fifteen years after her award.
WONCA Five Star Doctor Awards 2010
At Cancun 2010, Professor Chris Van Weel announced the winners of the Five Star Doctor Award for this triennium: Dr Sonia Roache-Barker of Trinidad and Tobago and Professor Ruth Wilson of Canada.
Prof Chris Van Weel presents the Wonca Five Star Doctor Award to Sonia Roache-Barker in Cancun
WONCA’s Award of Excellence in Health Care, called the Five Star Doctor Award, is judged on the following five criteria:
CARE PROVIDER
A care provider who considers the patient as an integral part of a family and the community and provides a high standard of clinical care (excluding or diagnosing serious illness and injury, managing chronic disease and disability) and provides personalised preventive care whilst building a trusting patient-doctor relationship.
DECISION MAKER
A decision maker, who chooses which technologies to apply ethically and cost-effectively while enhancing the care that he or she provides.
COMMUNICATOR
A communicator, who is able to promote healthy lifestyles by emphatic explanation, thereby empowering individuals and groups to enhance and protect their health.
COMMUNITY LEADER
A community leader, who has won the trust of the people among whom he or she works, who can reconcile individual and community health requirements and initiate action on behalf of the community.
TEAM MEMBER
A team member, who can work harmoniously with individuals and organisations, within and outside the health care system, to meet his or her patients and community's needs.
The achievements of these two worthy recipients in meeting these criteria are detailed below.
Professor Ruth Wilson – Canada
Professor Wilson was nominated for this award by Dr Calvin Gutkin of the College of Family Physicians of Canada. His nomination outlined how Professor Wilson satisfies the requirements to be considered for this award.
CARE PROVIDER
She has worked for twenty years working as a family physician in Kingston Ontario providing care to 700 registered patients and delivering the babies of her own patients and other referred patients. She is now starting to deliver a second generation of babies. Dr Wilson enjoys trusted relationships with her patients, and has many multi-generational families in her teaching practice. She uses an electronic medical record to track preventive care for her patients and manage chronic diseases.
Prior to establishing the family practice in Kingston, she worked for 11 years in rural and remote areas of Canada, providing a full range of services including anaesthesia, emergency room care, obstetrics, and inpatient care. Periodically since then has provided locum services in remote Canadian communities, most recently in Iqaluit, Nunavut.
DECISION MAKER
Currently a Professor of Family Medicine, and for ten years head of the Department of Family Medicine at Queen’s University, her role included Chief of Family Medicine duties at two teaching hospitals.
Her research interests are in the areas of women’s health and indigenous peoples’ health, and the lessons learned in these two communities which might be applied to the understanding of the broad determinants of health. She showed a prevalence of end stage renal disease twice the national average in a Cree population; showed that women are less likely than men to receive renal transplants in Canada, and has explored in her publications the potential reasons for these apparent inequities in health system resource allocation. She has also served on a number of provincial bodies responsible for allocating funds in these areas, for example, the Ontario Women’s Health Council, and the Chronic Renal Insufficiency Task Force.
COMMUNICATOR
She has spoken widely on the subjects of primary care reform, women’s health, and aboriginal health. Dr Wilson travelled to over sixty communities in the province of Ontario, speaking to groups of family physicians and others about new models of primary care. She is the co-editor of the Women’s Health chapters of the Oxford Textbook of Primary Care. She is the editor of a book entitled “Implementing Primary Care Reform: Barriers and Facilitators”.
COMMUNITY LEADER
Dr Wilson has chaired a provincial agency called the Ontario Family Health Network, which was charged with implementing primary care reform in Ontario, a province of 12 million people. The challenge was to encourage family physicians to form group practices, working with other health professionals, providing 24 hour a day access to comprehensive care, and adopt electronic medical records. After initial considerable resistance, over two thirds of the population of the province are now registered with a group family practice, and the vast majority of family physicians in the province are working in the new models of care.
Dr Wilson made the initial contacts and worked with colleagues such as Dr Geoff Hodgetts to establish family medicine in the former Yugoslavia, beginning immediately after the end of the war in 1995. Specifically, she provided departmental support to this work; has made numerous trips to Serbia and Bosnia for the purposes of supporting policy development, as well as providing direct clinical teaching in newly established family medicine residency programs.
TEAM MEMBER
In her clinical practice works in an inter-professional team which includes other family physicians, a nurse, a practical nurse, a nurse practitioner, a dietician, a social worker, a pharmacist, and office assistants.
Dr Wilson is a past president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada. Acknowledged as a facilitative leader, she has recently assumed the Chair of the Canadian Medical Forum, a leadership roundtable of Canada’s major medical organizations.
Congratulations to Professor Wilson on receiving the Wonca Five Star Doctor Award.
Dr Sonia Roache-Barker – Trinidad and Tobago
Dr Sonia Roache-Barker was nominated for this award by Dr Pauline Williams-Green of the Caribbean College of Family Physicians. Her nomination outlined how Dr Roache-Barker satisfies the requirements to be considered for this award.
CARE PROVIDER
Dr Roache-Barker is in active practice as a GP / Family Doctor; having set up practice in the suburbs of Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad, West Indies, first as locum to her aunt-in-law, Dame Dr Hilda Bynoe, made Governor of Grenada and then, continuing in single handed practice from 1970 until 2005. She is now sharing a practice with Dr Violet Forsythe-Duke at a Clinic in the city of Port of Spain. She also runs a Clinic at the Eric Williams Medical Centre, Mt. Hope that caters for patients living in other parts of Trinidad, Tobago and also neighbouring countries such as Grenada and Guyana.
She has developed a reputation for clinical acumen in diagnosis and management of problems associated with women, children and the psychologically disturbed. She individualizes her approach to suit the patient, the moment and the circumstances. Her aim is to try to guide each patient through his/her life’s journey with the help of multidisciplinary and allied health teams in the context of family and the community.
The practice is now multi-generational, many patients treating her as a friend. Communication by emails with those who have computer and internet access has enhanced the care given to patients outside of normal working hours.
She also performs as a “Doctor in Industry”, being the first female to be employed as the Medical Superintendent of the Port Authority of Trinidad & Tobago (T&T), providing care for injured workmen as well as advising on occupational and environmental matters. She has worked in various Clinics dealing with persons from depressed communities, in particular an area known as Sea Lots, Port of Spain with the majority of patients being female and young adults.
She has also worked with the Family Planning Association and the Population programme of Trinidad & Tobago to spearhead education in family planning and responsible parenthood and to assist patients in the proper use of contraceptives.
DECISION MAKER
Dr Roache-Barker has been active in the Caribbean College of Family Physicians (CCFP) from the inaugural meeting in Jamaica in 1987 until the present time. She is currently its interim Executive Director. She was instrumental in the College being accepted by CARICOM (the Caribbean Community) as a “Liaison Organization” - the sole medical body within the Region to be so acknowledged, thus ensuring that the College’s representation of the interests of primary-care doctors can have a regional hearing.
She has worked with two Past Regional Presidents of CCFP to ensure CCFP’s acceptance as a full organizational member of Wonca. She successfully advocated for the inclusion of practising GPs on the staff of the Faculty of Medical Sciences at UWI-St Augustine as Associate Lecturers, thus giving GPs entry to the department as teachers, mentors, and examiners in the discipline of Family Medicine.
COMMUNICATOR
Dr Roache-Barker was the first doctor in T&T to be asked to be a Media medical communicator, starting first on radio, later including print (Women’s Weekly Magazines) and television. She initiated the “Radio Doctor” call-in series in Trinidad & Tobago, answering live queries on matters relating to medicine and allied health. She continues to be a sought-after speaker across the country on a wide range of topics.
Since becoming a member of Wonca, she tries to meet with as many colleagues from the various Regions in an effort to learn more about them but also to share with them information about the Caribbean.
COMMUNITY LEADER
Dr Roache-Barker has participated in interventions in her community both as an individual and previously as a member of the Lions/Lioness Club. She worked with Rotaract and Faith-based organizations to initiate programmes with Teens and HIV prevention, partnering with various groups and selected government Ministries to assist families, men, women and children in preserving their physical, emotional, mental and sexual health.
She was co-opted to serve on the Prime Minister’s Vision 2020 Committee on Crime & Security, because of her past record in social initiatives and her ideas for delivery of care in deprived communities. She is a member of the Civil Society movement in T&T, encouraging more involvement of the citizenry in governance, especially where the ecological and environmental health of the country is concerned.
She has been involved in teen/adolescent/young adults’ health education and promotion initiatives, especially where it relates to prevention of teen pregnancy, STDs, HIV-AIDS, and delinquency. She conceptualised and helped to initiate the first “Health Fairs” in Trinidad & Tobago, setting up a framework which would include basic screening for the Chronic Diseases and sharing of information with lay persons about assuming responsibility for one’s individual health while teaching them how to monitor for these diseases.
Her community service is demonstrated by having been elected Life Member of her local Diabetes Association and Honorary Member of the local Nutritionist & Dieticians Association. Her community interests are diverse: she is a social activist, a member of the local Arts Society, a ‘friend’ of the Botanic Gardens and the Horticultural Society and devotes most of her spare time to her Church and its commitment to the community. She has continued to work with various NGOs related to Health, notably the Diabetes Association and the Rape Crisis Centre serving as mentor, advisor, counsellor or in whatever capacity needed.
TEAM MEMBER
Dr Roache-Barker is a member of various local/regional medical groups, including the Trinidad & Tobago Medical Association serving as a Chairperson for its Northern Branch, the General Practitioners Association of Trinidad & Tobago, the Caribbean College of Family Physicians (CCFP) as a founding member, a Past Regional President, and presently Executive Director.
She mentors 4th and 5th year undergraduate medical students in Family Medicine and is an Associate Lecturer on Faculty. She has been involved in teaching, health education and advocacy for persons with HIV from the earliest days of the disease, serving on the first National Advisory Council for HIV-AIDS formed in Trinidad & Tobago.
She tends to be an ideas-generator and motivator, preferring to stay in the background whilst furthering the cause with which she happens to be involved.
Editor’s note: Dr Roache-Barker emigrated to Trinidad in 1964 from her birthplace, Jamaica, after marriage to a University colleague from Grenada. Sonia has two living children, a daughter who is a Schoolteacher/Artist and a son who is a Computer Engineer.
Congratulations to Dr Roache-Barker who was in Cancun to receive her WONCA Five Star Doctor Award.