Community Stories
NOSM alumnus helps to end Atikokan’s doctor shortage
A few years ago, Atikokan was a town in crisis having only one full-time and one half time family physician for a population of approximately 2,800. The community relied heavily on a rotation of locums to meet its health-care needs. Today, the town has a stable physician workforce that is able to provide patient-centered care, continuity of care and, importantly, a supportive network for physicians. Dr. Shawn Minor is a graduate of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) MD Class of 2016 and completed his residency at University of British Columbia in 2018. Originally from Thunder Bay, Dr. Minor and his wife, with their young c...
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Rural emergency medicine: Learning from a fatal head-on collision in Wawa
“It was pitch black on the highway. There was no light, except for the vehicle that had caught on fire and the headlights from police cars. We used our ambulance headlights to see,” says Derek Blanchet, Primary Care Paramedic. He and fellow paramedic Zoltan Pinter were the first responders to arrive on the scene on Sunday, August 19, 2018. Blanchet and Pinter were responding to a two-vehicle, head-on collision on Highway 17, 20 minutes south of Wawa at 10:30 p.m. The first car hit a moose then collided into the oncoming car. The result was a Multiple Casualty Incident (MCI) involving nine people: two pediatric of the sev...
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