Gallery

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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Hurricanes, wildfires and the Opioid crisis: How one NOSM Resident won a national award for social accountability

Dr. Lloyd Douglas was involved in public health before he was even old enough to realize it. “In Jamaica—when I was just a teenager—when a hurricane came my way I was the guy running around bringing people out of the way.” What started as volunteer work, became real public health experience. At a young age, Dr. Douglas was assisting with emergency planning and response to Jamaica’s hurricane season. The experience would lead him onto his path of becoming a doctor. “That passion was always inside of me and I’ve always really wanted to help.” Fast forward to April 2019,and Dr. Douglas was the only medical reside...

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How education and work reconnected a NOSM Francophone employee to her culture

Debbie Popien is best described as the person who is always smiling and goes out of her way to see how others are doing. She’s a Francophone Student Records and Electives Officer at NOSM at Lakehead University. She speaks English with such clarity and ease that you’d never know her first language is French. Born in Timmins, her mom is from a small town in Quebec and her dad is from a small community outside of Kapuskasing called Moonbeam. “When I was a year old, we moved to Thunder Bay for my dad's business in the forestry industry, and I spoke only French until I was about four. Then I had to start school,” she recalls. ...