Physician – Street Medicine

Job Title:

Physician – Street Medicine & Housing-Based Primary Care

Work Site:

601 – 111 W Hastings St Vancouver, BC

Regular outreach across encampments, shelters, SROs, supported housing, and complex care housing
(Travel to multiple community sites required)

Status:

Permanent Part-Time

Start Date:

ASAP

Compensation Type:

Alternative Payment Arrangement

Come work as a General Practitioner with Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH)

Overview

Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) is recruiting a family physician to join an interdisciplinary street medicine and housing-based primary care program within our Homelessness, Supported Housing, and Complex Care portfolio.

This role is embedded in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES), a community shaped by decades of clinical innovation, academic scholarship, and grassroots activism. The DTES is home to Insite, North America's first legally sanctioned supervised consumption site, and a dense ecosystem of low-barrier health, housing, harm reduction, and peer-led services that continue to influence policy and practice internationally.

Care is delivered across the full continuum of environments where people live - encampments, shelters, SROs, supported housing, and complex care housing - with housing understood as a central health intervention. The work is dynamic, evolving, and situated within a complex policy and service landscape, requiring clinicians who are adaptable, reflective, and committed to equity-oriented practice.

About the Role

You will practice within a hybrid care model integrating street-based outreach with housing-embedded primary care. Clinical work spans episodic and opportunistic encounters as well as longitudinal relationships, emphasizing trust-building, continuity, and care without preconditions.

Care is delivered in close collaboration with embedded nursing, social work, outreach, and housing teams, supported by regular case conferences and shared care planning. The model reflects core principles of street medicine: meeting people where they are, minimizing barriers to care, and adapting clinical practice to structural realities.

This role is well suited to clinicians with interests in complex care, mental health, substance use, and the social and structural determinants of health.

Key Responsibilities

As a physician with VCH, you will:

• Serve as Most Responsible Provider (MRP) for residents in designated complex care housing models
• Provide comprehensive primary care adapted to the realities of homelessness, unstable housing, and severe multimorbidity
• Deliver episodic and longitudinal medical care following nurse-led assessments, both virtually and in person
• Develop shared care plans with nursing and outreach teams, aligned with patient-identified goals
• Collaborate with other physicians, nurse practitioners, outreach teams, and acute care colleagues to support continuity across settings
• Participate in interdisciplinary case conferences and system-level care coordination

Scope of Clinical Practice

Clinical activities commonly include:

• Preventive care and chronic disease management in non-traditional settings
• Management of skin and soft tissue infections, wounds, and injection-related complications
• Bridging and continuity prescribing for opioid agonist therapy and other essential medications
• Assessment and management of psychiatric decompensation, including antipsychotic titration
• Rare virtual certifications under the Mental Health Act (Form 4)
• Care coordination, hospital discharge planning, and liaison with specialty services

Who This Role Is For

This position will appeal to physicians with experience or interest in:

• Street medicine or unsheltered outreach
• Care of people experiencing homelessness or severe housing instability
• Mental health, substance use, and complex multimorbidity
• Harm reduction and trauma- and violence-informed care
• Team-based primary care in non-traditional clinical environments

Education, Licensing, & Experience:

• Current College of Physicians of BC (CPSBC) – Full
• Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA) – Mandatory
• Emergency Experience – Desired
• MD with CCFP (or equivalent) and active license to practice in BC (CPSBC).
• Experience in primary care, emergency medicine, psychiatry, addictions medicine, or related fields.
• Strong proficiency in team-based care and comfort working with nurses and social workers.
• Familiarity or willingness to learn the HCCFAA, MHA, and AGA legislative frameworks.
• Commitment to patient-centered, harm reduction–oriented care.
• Proficiency in EMRs (Profile, PARIS, Cerner); training and compensation provided.
• Strong advocacy skills in navigating acute care systems and discharge planning

Interested in applying? Feel free to reach out to Ben Murphy, Executive and Medical Staff Talent Acquisition Advisor: or click "Apply Now."

As per Ministry of Health policy, all health care workers working in publicly-funded health care facilities are required to report their past receipt of certain vaccines or history of certain infections. Collecting these records will allow for offering of any missing vaccines, and for appropriate actions to be taken in the event of any future exposure to a communicable disease or during outbreaks. For all new hires and appointments to Vancouver Coastal Health, you will be asked to provide this information as part of the onboarding process.

WHY JOIN VANCOUVER COASTAL HEALTH?

VCH is a world class innovator in medical care, research and teaching, delivering service to more than one million BC residents. At VCH, we embrace thinking boldly, taking smart risks, and "going first" when we believe it will lead to the best possible outcomes for patients and their families. We invite you to join us in creating healthy lives in healthy communities by showcasing our passion for care, connection to the communities we serve and our culture of teamwork that makes VCH a great place to work.

• Grow your career with employer-paid training and leadership development opportunities
• Wellness supports, including counselling, critical incident and innovative wellness services are available to employees and their immediate families
• Award-winning recognition programs to honour staff, medical staff and volunteers
• Access to exclusive discount offers and deals for VCH staff

At Vancouver Coastal Health, our vision of healthy lives in healthy communities inspires us and our values and pillars guide us. We support equitable practices, diverse teams and inclusive environments, which are vital to creating welcoming spaces where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and feel supported. We encourage applications from equity-deserving communities, including Indigenous Peoples and members of racialized groups, people with disabilities and people of all gender identities and expressions and sexual orientation.

Vancouver Coastal Health is proud to be recognized as one of Canada's Top 100 Employers in 2024.