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Northern Routes

Listening, learning and daring to lead

These past six weeks, I have had the joy of traveling across Northern Ontario to consult widely about NOSM University. I have met with leaders, physician teachers, resident doctors, medical students, alumni, community-based researchers and so many more. For me, this has been about listening, learning and respecting. Importantly, it’s been about transparency and honest conversations.

As we make the journey to becoming NOSM University, our public consultation is employing a range of strategies to foster trust as a critical element in long-term, sustainable engagement. With trust, comes relationships that respect the right of partners to be informed and empowered. Existing partners need to participate in the vision for NOSM University and new partners need to join in the movement. Our ultimate goal is reciprocity—relationships with partners and communities across Northern Ontario that are mutually beneficial. NOSM University will make a huge impact as we continue our momentum and build on our successes in the future.

The challenge is that we have entered an era of declining trust, to varying degrees, in all kinds of institutions. What is truth and what is not, can sometimes get blurred in the frenzy of competition. But that is an antiquated way of leveraging success. In my opinion, we need better collaboration to ensure the positive outcomes for all institutions in the North – to “lift all boats.” The spreading of misinformation about the future of NOSM University has meant that discussions have provided the opportunity to rebuild and strengthen the trust invested in NOSM back in 2002.

Getting back on the road after the pandemic restrictions were lowered and living in Thunder Bay has made a huge difference for me both personally and professionally. After a short seven months on the job, I had been in lockdown in Sudbury and unable to complete my plan to ‘get acquainted’ with Northern Ontario. Since Labour Day, I have been able to meet with staff, faculty, partners, alumni and donors.

On October 4, I hosted an engagement event with a group of donors who have contributed funds to support our students and programs. They are involved, enthusiastic and will continue to contribute to areas of need. As NOSM University seeks to rebuild our endowments and ensure that no learner is left behind due to the cost of higher education, their commitment to equity and learner support is remarkable. NOSM University aspires to making higher education accessible to anyone who wants to pursue a career.

On October 1, NOSM’s residency program directors and administrators had a day long retreat and again, I was able to have a meaningful dialogue with them about expansion, innovation and regionalisation. I continue to be highly impressed by their work—and by our team led by Dr. Rob Anderson and Jennifer Fawcett. With accreditation coming up at the end of November, they are working flat out. With a fantastic group of clinician leaders, I know our residency programs will do well.

On October 5, I hosted the first of many townhalls on the NOSM University concept. What a turn out! This was an unprecedented opportunity to hear from everyone about the issues and to assure all that NOSM University has no intention of leaving the Northwest and to allay the fears created by some statements that were simply untrue. The calming of waters and the presentation of a bold, relevant yet visionary future was really well-received.

I have also spent valuable time in Sioux Lookout (October 12), Kenora (October 13), Fort Frances (October 14). These meetings with people from all walks – hospitals, educational institutes, clinics, AHACs and municipalities reinvigorated me and provided inspiration yet also, validation that we are on the right course, and that becoming NOSM University is the right trajectory. Today, I am in Hearst and I will be in Kapuskasing tomorrow.

Many people so graciously hosted us in the Northwest. A very moving time was spent at the Gizhewaadiziwin Health Access Centre and where we offered tobacco at the site of the residential school.

The work is only half way done. There is a townhall in Sudbury (November 2) and a discussion with the Local Education Group leads on November 5. I also plan to meet with leaders and have townhalls in North Bay (November 8), Timmins (November 10) and Sault Ste. Marie (November 12). Phew! It will be a whirlwind tour. And so far, I am loving the vistas of Northern Ontario, the spectacular beauty, autumn colours and the warmth of the NOSM community.

There is still time to RSVP here for a NOSM University Consultation session near you.

What themes are emerging thus far?

  1. There is unequivocal support for the evolution of NOSM to a free-standing University.
  2. NOSM has been successful at graduating physicians for the urban centers, but we have more work to do for many rural, remote, First Nations, Francophone and minority communities.
  3. Physicians who take on a teaching role, NOSM’s clinical faculty, are feeling the stressors of the pandemic. They are experiencing diminishing resources and need more support with difficult problems such as managing learners with special needs and balancing clinical service demands with no protected academic time.

The presence of the Dean in community has reinforced the message that NOSM University will ‘stay the course’ on its commitment to social accountability and that it intends to stay in Thunder Bay, Sudbury and across all of Northern Ontario.

This consultation and engagement process also includes a public survey, to which you can contribute your input here.

With 159 responses to the survey, here is what we’ve heard so far:

  • 94% of respondents believe that with the urgent need for more allied health professionals in Northern Ontario, transforming health human resource planning is still a priority.
  • When asked about social accountability, it is seen as an ever changing reality – fluid yet important. It’s a key value for NOSM University to keep at the centre of everything we do.
  • As a university, NOSM must keep it commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion and reconciliation. Indigenous communities value our partnership and see real chances to co-create a future.

Although it is still in the making, nothing has been decided on our new model yet. I am excited to learn more and to hear from you. What does the NOSM University of the future look like to you? If you want to check in with the government plan, you can comment here: Consultation related to a regulation under the Northern Ontario School of Medicine University Act, 2021.

At the Federation of Medical Women of Canada Annual meeting on October 1, I gave a plenary speech with the Dean of Health Sciences at Queen’s University, Dr. Jane Philpott. The topic was suitably titled for the two of us: Dare to Lead. If you are interested, here is the link to my slides. They are oriented to women, but apply to all. Take my Dare to Lead Questionnaire!

Are you a do-er, daring and discovering person? I am, according to some, a daring leader. What do you think?

Miigwetch, thank you, marsi, merci,

Dr. Sarita Verma
Dean, President and CEO
Northern Ontario School of Medicine

If you have any feedback or comments, please reach out at dean@nosm.ca and follow me on Twitter @ddsv3.

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16th annual Northern Health Research Conference

Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s NHRC. For the first time since the inception of NHRC, the presentations were grouped into themes with a total of 23 oral presentations and 25 poster presentations. Congratulations to Dr. Christopher Thome, the 2021 recipient of the Rene Guilbeault Research Award, for his project titled: Ionizing radiation induced stimulation of natural killer cell cytotoxicity: A mechanism for cancer immunotherapy. Thank you to Dr. Mohammed Shurrab, keynote speaker, for his presentation on cardiovascular research using health services administrative data in Northern Ontario. Special thanks to Drs. TC Tai, Lacey Pitre, Eliseo Orrantia and Deborah Saunders, the NHRC Scientific Planning Committee, who reviewed all abstracts, as well as the entire Research and Continuing Education and Professional Development teams at NOSM.


Upcoming CEPD events

There are many exciting CEPD events taking place in the next month, including:

Changes in NOSM’s organizational structure 

Effect immediately, Faculty Affairs, led by Dr. Harshad Telang, Associate Dean Faculty Affairs, will report to Dr. William McCready, Senior Associate Dean and Special Advisor. The Office of Institutional Intelligence, led by Mat Litalien, Director, Office of Institutional Intelligence will report to Dr. David Marsh, Associate Dean, Research, Innovation and International Relations. These changes are in reporting structure only and will better position NOSM in transitioning to NOSM University.


Congratulations!

Dr. Maurianne Reade was recently nominated to the Ontario Immunization Advisory Committee, bringing a rural Northern Ontario voice to the committee.

Addressing the Gaps, Community Stories, Homepage News, News

NOSM strengthening roots in Thunder Bay

Earlier this week, Dr. Sartia Verma, Dean, President and CEO of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM), hosted the first in a series of consultations on the future of NOSM. After providing community members with an update of the School’s impact on health care and education in Thunder Bay, Dr. Verma spoke about her vision for NOSM as Canada’s first stand-alone medical university.

“NOSM is here to stay in Thunder Bay, especially as we transition to a university,” says Dr. Verma. “We have established roots here, and we have plans to build a stronger academic network with the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, Thunder Bay Regional Health Research Institute, Lakehead University and other community partners.”

“We are committed to Thunder Bay, and we are committed to Northern Ontario,” says Dr. Verma. “In my conversations with community members, I’ve been impressed with the support for NOSM University and the positive economic impact we have had in this city. We will be happy to work with City Council to deliver jobs and improve access to health care.”

Thunder Bay is currently in need of 50 physicians: 10 family doctors and 40 specialists, including 12 psychiatrists.

NOSM University is focused on moving forward with its strategic priorities, which includes supporting leaders with the skills to make bold changes. The University, once proclaimed into force, will maintain its mandate to advocating for equitable health care, especially for underserved rural, Indigenous and Francophone communities in Northern Ontario.

By the numbers:

  • There are 256 students enrolled in the MD program at NOSM, with 112 located in Thunder Bay.
  • Currently, 66 resident doctors are working in Thunder Bay and studying to become family physicians or specialize in general surgery, internal medicine, orthopedic surgery, pediatrics, psychiatry or public health and preventative medicine.
  • NOSM also educates registered dietitians, medical physicists, and—through affiliation agreements with universities in southern Ontario—supports health sciences learners in physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech language pathology, audiology, and physician assistants.
  • Teaching takes place at more than 35 locations in Thunder Bay, which includes hospitals, family health teams and clinics.
  • As one of the large urban sites, every year Thunder Bay hosts 28 fourth-year medical students’ clinical rotations at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre.
  • More than 95 doctors now practising in Thunder Bay have completed their education with NOSM as either medical students or resident doctors.
  • Currently, 438 faculty members are located in Thunder Bay—14 self-identify as Francophone and another 14 self-identify as Indigenous. More than 400 of these faculty members are practising physicians.
  • Since 2017, Thunder Bay has welcomed more than 1,700 learners.
  • In 2020, Thunder Bay Local Education Group (LEG) Members at NOSM published more than 75 articles and received 18 research grants totaling more than $1.8 million.

As NOSM evolves into Canada’s first stand-alone medical university, the School continues to consult widely with Northern Ontarians. Upcoming town halls are scheduled in Sioux Lookout, Kenora, Fort Frances, Hearst, Sudbury, North Bay, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie and Rosseau (Parry Sound-Muskoka). Dates and details for in-person or virtual participation can be found on the NOSM website.

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The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) is an award-winning socially accountable medical school renowned for its innovative model of distributed, community-engaged education and research. With a focus on diversity, inclusion, and advocacy for health equity, NOSM relies on the commitment and expertise of the peoples and communities of Northern Ontario to educate health-care professionals to practise in Indigenous, Francophone, rural, remote and underserved communities. NOSM’s graduates, faculty, learners and staff are changemakers who lead health-system transformation in Northern Ontario. The School is a recipient of the Charles Boelen International Social Accountability Award from the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada and the prestigious ASPIRE award, which recognize international excellence in social accountability and medical education.

For further information, please contact: news@nosm.ca

Northern Routes

Doctors needed.

This week is the start of our public consultations about the future of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM). We are kicking off a series of town halls in Thunder Bay this evening and there is still time to register. I also look forward to spending time in Sioux Lookout, Kenora, Fort Frances, Hearst, Sudbury, North Bay, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie and Rosseau in the coming weeks. Dates and times as well as a link to RSVP are on the School’s website. As space is limited to attend in person, please RSVP or plan to participate virtually. It is not possible at this time to visit every community so I encourage all Northern Ontarians to participate in at least one town hall. I hope that in the next year, we will visit as many communities across Northern Ontario as possible.

We know that NOSM has been very successful in improving access to quality health care for Northern Ontarians, but the reality is we have so much more work to do. As of today, we estimate that over 300 physicians are needed in the North and that does not factor retirements that may take place in the next five years. We need to transform health human resources (HHR) to align with our needs in Northern Ontario and address all types of communities including: Francophone, Indigenous, rural, and urban. NOSM’s strategic plan, The NOSM Challenge 2025, identified this as the key priority with a focus on specialist and subspecialist physician training.

Four outcomes are being measured as NOSM moves forward with achieving this priority:

  1. An integrated, customised and evidence-based approach to health human resources (HHR) for Northern Ontario;
  2. Integration of rural, remote and community needs into our education programs;
  3. Enhanced connectivity and communications for all NOSM communities; and,
  4. A system to support clinical faculty in their academic work.

The aspiration is that NOSM’s transformative approach to the planning and delivery of the health-care workforce supply will eliminates the gaps in Northern Ontario health human resources.

Initial information on the measurable outcomes of this work can be found on the strategic plan website.

The other strategic priorities of Advance Social Accountability, Innovate Health Professions Education, and Strengthen Research Capacity in Northern Ontario are all linked to this first strategic direction.

You may be asking, what is NOSM’s role in the development of physician resources for Northern Ontario? NOSM’s role is broadly in three domains:

  1. Education and training of future clinicians:
    • Ensure teaching and training capacity by working with communities and clinicians to create equitable opportunities for all communities and faculty to participate in training NOSM learners and those doing electives.
    • Create a culture of welcome and excellence in experience to all medical learners —NOSM learners, external elective learners as well as summer students.
    • Advocate for elective learners to access education opportunities in Northern Ontario with a special focus on areas of need—both for rural communities and for specialties and subspecialties for which NOSM does not have training programs.
    • Support ability to adapt to community need by aligning training of learners with enhanced skill development (i.e. emergency medicine, obstetrical services, mental health and addictions care).
    • Ensure a healthy and safe learning environment for NOSM learners, staff and faculty.
  2. Retention of skilled clinical faculty:
    • Advocate for physician complement and funding models that consider non-clinical roles (teaching, scholarly activity and leadership).
    • Support leadership and mentoring that enhance retention of skilled clinicians able to engage in both NOSM and system level leadership.
    • Support faculty to maintain clinical knowledge and skills through CEPD opportunities.
    • Create opportunities for clinicians to grow in teaching and academic roles through faculty development.
  3. Collaboration with health-system partners (MOH, OMA, OH, OHTs) for planning, advocacy and alignment:
    • Match training in NOSM’s programs to anticipated clinical need in collaboration with MOH, OH North and regional HHR plan.
    • Advocate for meaningful data resources for planning.
    • Support and partner with AHSN/hospital network to create a culture across the North of support for excellence in education, clinical care and scholarly activity.
    • Seek funding for academic teaching and research in NOSM partner sites.

The issue of physician resources to deliver the academic mandate has been a foundational issue for NOSM since its inception. The fact is that clinical teaching at NOSM occurs on the backs of busy, stressed health-care providers without the ‘protected time’ that is afforded at other universities. A modernized model of education, training and health service delivery should ensure the sustainability of the profession and not contribute to burn out.

NOSM seeks to build a flourishing physician workforce for Northern Ontario, locally integrated with the system and regionally networked, with primary care as the strong foundation, and supported by robust, accessible specialist services across Northern Ontario. Clinical education must be considered an integral component of a sustainable health-care system, and the physician resources required to enable high quality, accessible care must be considered in the context of a teaching and learning health-care system in which learners are trained by those same physicians to provide equitable, high-quality care. The concept of an integrated teaching and clinical service workforce is key to the future success of sustainable health-care delivery for the region.

This key strategic direction will not change with the arrival of NOSM University. Addressing the inequities, NOSM University will build education models capitalizing on regionalization and community networks, while supporting the evolution of our medical school into a Canada’s first medical university.

Read about the status of the progress on our Strategic Plan in the Dean’s Report titled Transformation. As you read through the report, I invite you to learn about how the pandemic helped NOSM transformed through the outstanding leadership of many across Northern Ontario and how in many ways, there is no looking back. Find out why NOSM has the most diverse incoming MD class in its history. Discover how the NOSM Summer Studentship Program made the crucial difference in Hearst. Be amazed by the reinvention of CampMed. Read about how NOSM is moving social accountability forward on a global scale.

As mentioned above, the NOSM University consultation and engagement process which includes a public survey, meetings, focus groups, interviews and town halls is already underway. You can complete the survey and contribute your input here.

Miigwetch, thank you, marsi, merci,

Dr. Sarita Verma
Dean, President and CEO
Northern Ontario School of Medicine

If you have any feedback or comments, please reach out at dean@nosm.ca and follow me on twitter @ddsv3.

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2021 Virtual Northern Health Research Conference

Registration is open for the upcoming 2021 Virtual Northern Health Research Conference. The NHRC 2021 takes place on Friday, October 15 from 1:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Keynote speaker, Dr. Mohammed Shurrab, Assistant Professor at NOSM and Cardiologist and Electrophysiologist at Health Sciences North (HSN), will speak on Cardiovascular research using health services administrative data in Northern Ontario: Impact on quality of care and outcomes. Dr. Shurrab is working with ICES North integrating academics, research and scholarship to improve the quality of care and outcomes in Northern Ontario. This year’s conference will also feature 23 live oral presentations as well as 24 pre-recorded poster presentations highlighting the themes of: Indigenous People’s Health; Clinical; Health Services; Population and Public Health; Cancer; Medical Education; and, Environment and Health.

Vaccinations are mandatory at NOSM

All individuals who access NOSM campus facilities in Sudbury and Thunder Bay are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. For those who are unvaccinated, and are required to be on campus, will be required to undergo regular testing for COVID-19 and provide a negative test in order to access campus.

Please refer to the appropriate policy for additional details:


CACMS consultation successful

A big thank you to everyone who attended the meetings during the two-day Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS) Consultation Visit for the MD program which occurred September 27 and 28, 2021. The MD program leaders received excellent advice in each meeting and wish to thank the CACMS Secretariat members, Dr. Donald McKay, Dr. Marianne Xhignesse, and Claudine Le Quellec for their time and expertise. Thank you to NOSM’s Michael Lenardon, Vin Auld, and Rosie Bourdeau for their technical assistance for the two days of virtual meetings and a special thank you to Cathy Powell for her tireless work for NOSM’s accreditation of its MD program.


National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

September 30 was Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. NOSM hosted a special event with Drs. Scott Hamilton and Kona Williams who spoke about the gravesites at residential schools. You can watch the recording here. Special thanks to everyone who bought a t-shirt or buff in support of the new Truth bursary for Indigenous learners. As of October 1, 484 t-shirts and 123 buffs were sold in support of the bursary.

NOSM University