Region well-represented in charter class.

Officials at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) have taken the first step in ensuring the doctors the school produces are suited to practise in the North.

The charter class of 56 represents a broad spectrum of the North's population, according to Dr. Jill Konkin, associate dean, admissions and student affairs.

"Approximately 75 percent of the class has spent at least 10 years in remote, rural and other Northern Ontario communities, and 15 percent hail from rural or remote communities in other parts of the country," she says.

Admissions officials interviewed 400 of the 2,100 applicants, in whittling down the charter class to 56.

"We've been successful in the first year as far as choosing a class that reflects the demographics of Northern Ontario."

The school is also endeavouring to build up a recruitment program in the region's communities, so "children growing up in Northern Ontario can imagine becoming a doctor," she says. "We want to build up a pool of applicants, especially in under-represented groups. Our intent is to be as socially accountable as we can be."

When it comes to the makeup of the charter class, demographics are everything, she says.

"The challenge was to build a process that is open, transparent and fair, but clearly aimed at removing barriers to remote and rural students, as well as to students with an Aboriginal or Francophone background, (while ensuring quality students are admitted)," says Konkin.

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Now that the students are through the doors, it's up to the curriculum to get them to their rural and remote practices.

The task of developing that curriculum was no easy one, since Konkin had, basically, no precedent for the path NOSM was going to follow.

"Developing programs from scratch, without student input and from a plan that is supposed to create a curriculum that is responsive to the needs of this region's inhabitants, was the biggest challenge," she says.

So planners had to anticipate the needs of the students and the people they will eventually be treating, while leaving room for adjustment.

NOSM is blazing trail in how it approaches residencies. Students will be placed as early as second year, more often and for longer than in contemporary Canadian medical schools.

"We are taking the student out of the hierarchy of the teaching hospital and putting them in small clinics where they will learn to operate as rural doctors, and experience a lifestyle they may embrace," says NOSM CAO Dorothy Wright.

The ripple effect 

The presence of the school will probably boost undergraduate enrolment at the universities, if only because grads of Laurentian's or Lakehead's bio-chemistry or other pre-medical programs know they have a better chance at admission to NOSM.

"My sense is students who came here in the past for pre-medical studies (that) were looking to the south (to finish their education) will be more likely to stick around, and we should be able to attract more pre-med students than in the past," says Lakehead president Dr. Fred Gilbert.

Gilbert says NOSM's affiliation with Lakehead will strengthen the university's reputation and dovetail with its foundations as a professional school-focused institution.

"Since the medical school has been in the works over the last three years, there has been a positive impact on enrolment, which has increased significantly," says Laurentian president Dr. Judith Woodsworth. "We have 20 percent more students for this upcoming year than we did the year prior to the double-cohort."

Like Woodsworth, he says he believes NOSM will add to his school's prestige. The university, which was incepted as the Lakehead Technical Institute 40 years ago (don't miss the 40th anniversary celebrations Sept. 29- Oct. 2) was built on professional schools in the health-care, forestry, engineering, psychiatry and other fields. It is going through the same transition Laurentian is, adding graduate programs and research activities to its academic mix.

The school is a good news story, but will not be a magic wand for the health-care woes of the scores of communities it serves.

When its charter class of 56 graduates in 2009, assuming they all stay in the North and the need for doctors doesn't diminish between now and then, there will still be a shortage of doctors.

Woodsworth says the class would fill about half of the vacancies across the region. NOSM brass are lobbying for more student positions, but, for every $15,000 in annual tuition the students come up with, the province chips in another $60,000. It's big business, so the school is hoping for maybe two to five new spots per year at best.

The biggest difference will be made not in the number of physicians the school graduates, but the type of doctor it creates.

They will be focused on the needs and challenges of the North, she says.

"They will be human beings, not just scientists with a lot of information in their heads," she asserts. "They will have training in social work and social issues, and will really make a difference."

The school will work closely with the Northwestern Ontario Medical Program (NOMP) and the Northeastern Ontario Medical Education Corporation (NOMEC), which manage successful Residency Programs in Family Medicine, plus a range of undergraduate, postgraduate and inter-disciplinary clinical education programs, intending to expand both programs.

"This expansion of postgraduate education will see a steady rise in the numbers of skilled physicians in Northern Ontario, even before there are graduates of the school's undergraduate program."

The profile of those rural residents and emerging healthcare teams, complete with nurse practitioners, midwives, nutritionists and other health-care professionals, will, hopefully, inspire young people in those communities to explore careers in the health-care field.

www.normed.ca

www.nomec.on.ca

www.nomp.on.ca

By CRAIG GILBERT

Northern Ontario Business