Last week, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) and the Bring a Doctor Home Hockey Tournament both celebrated their tenth anniversaries during the week-long hockey tournament held in Sault Ste. Marie.

Each year, employees, retirees, and volunteers of Essar Steel Algoma face off on the ice to raise money for NOSM students who hail from Sault Ste. Marie. During an appreciation event on January 22, 2015, Tournament Director Hal Mogg and NOSM’s Advancement Manager Gail Brescia unveiled a hockey banner to recognize the more than $25,000 that the Bring a Doctor Home Hockey Tournament raised last year in support of student bursaries.

Since the Bring a Doctor Home Hockey Tournament’s inception, more than $270,000 has been raised for¬ student bursaries that support NOSM medical students raised in the Sault. In addition, the community of Sault Ste. Marie has recruited 18 NOSM-trained physicians since the tournament began.

Community First Credit Union continued their support of the Bring a Doctor Home Hockey Tournament this year by collecting over $1,000 in donations in their two local branches, and by donating an additional $1,500 to directly support NOSM students. Community First Credit Union has also created an additional bursary for NOSM medical students, currently valued at $104,000.

“The Northern Ontario School of Medicine is so pleased to be celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, and we’re doing so with gratitude to the many people and communities across the North that make NOSM possible,” says Dr. David Marsh, NOSM Deputy Dean and Associate Dean of Community Engagement. “On behalf of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, I am very grateful to the volunteers and employees of Essar Steel Algoma, to Community First Credit Union, and to the community of Sault Ste. Marie for the generous financial and emotional support that they provide to our learners.”

“Organizations such as Essar Steel Algoma, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, and Community First Credit Union share the same value of community,” says Brent Lamming, CEO of Community First Credit Union. “All three of our organizations know how important physicians are to Sault Ste. Marie. We’ve all come together to proudly support bringing doctors home locally.”

“This is the tenth year of the tournament, and we are very excited to see the fruits of our labour,” says Hal Mogg, Tournament Director and employee of Essar Steel Algoma Inc. “These students are our children and grandchildren, and are returning home to fill a shortage that is shared by all Northern communities. We can’t express how gratified we are that the students and graduates of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine choose to be with us in the Sault.”

“A bursary like the Bring a Doctor Home Bursary not only alleviates financial burdens that we have as students, but also points to how much support medical students receive from the people of Sault Ste. Marie,” says Wilson Stephenson, NOSM medical student who grew up in Sault Ste. Marie. “On behalf of NOSM students, I’d like to thank everyone here who has made us feel so welcome, appreciated, and as though the work we’re doing in medical school is going to bring something back to this community.” Stephenson was one of two NOSM medical students to play in the Bring a Doctor Hockey Tournament this year.

Photo caption: Bring a Doctor Home Executive Members with NOSM medical students at a volunteer appreciation event held on Thursday, January 22, 2014.

The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) is seeking five (5) individuals to join the Board of Directors in September 2015.

Since its official opening in 2005, the School has developed and delivered a distinctive model of distributed, community-engaged, and socially accountable medical education and research. NOSM serves as the Faculty of Medicine of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and the Faculty of Medicine of Laurentian University in Sudbury, with teaching and research sites across Northern Ontario.

NOSM is a made-in-the-North solution that is attracting attention from around the world for its innovative model. In just a few years, NOSM has become a world leader in community-engaged medical education and research, while staying true to its social accountability mandate of contributing to improving the health of the people and communities of Northern Ontario. When the School welcomed its first students in September 2005, it became the first new medical school in Canada in over 30 years and the only Canadian medical school to be established as a stand-alone, not-for-profit corporation, with its own Board of Directors and corporate by-laws.

Application Information
Applicants must complete and submit a NOSM Board of Directors Application Form, accompanied by a CV or resumé and the names and contact information of three (3) references. All applications will be acknowledged.

Application forms and other supporting documents are available at nosm.ca/board.

Deadline for submissions is February 13, 2015.

For media inquiries, please contact:

news@nosm.ca

Dr. David Marsh to Assume Deputy Dean and Dr. Catherine Cervin to Assume
Senior Associate Dean, Laurentian University Roles

The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) is pleased to announce the reappointment of Dr. David Marsh as NOSM’s Associate Dean of Community Engagement for a second five-year term, effective July 1, 2015. In addition, Dr. Marsh will take up the new role of Deputy Dean, effective January 1, 2015.

Community Engagement at NOSM is a mechanism to deliver on the School’s social accountability mandate by ensuring all NOSM’s activities are conducted in active partnership with the communities the School serves. Dr. Marsh’s Aboriginal ancestry, coupled with a firsthand engagement with distinct populations and his strong clinical experience ideally position him to respond to the needs of Northern Ontario’s diverse cultural groups.

In his role as Deputy Dean, Dr. Marsh will be responsible for leading whole-school academic program developments by enabling, facilitating, and coordinating cross-portfolio collaborative initiatives which are consistent with the NOSM Strategic Plan and determined by the Executive Group. The Deputy Dean may assume the Dean’s responsibilities during the Dean’s absence.

In addition, Dr. Catherine Cervin, NOSM’s Associate Dean of Postgraduate Education (PGE) will assume the role of Senior Associate Dean at NOSM at Laurentian University as of January 1, 2015. Dr. Cervin has been successfully leading NOSM’s residency training programs since 2011, and has continued to fortify NOSM’s reputation as a leader in residency training to meet the needs of Northern Ontario. In May 2014, NOSM underwent its first full accreditation review for Postgraduate Education. The success of this review is a credit to the Postgraduate team under Dr. Cervin’s leadership.

“It is with great excitement that I congratulate both Dr. Marsh on his renewal and expanded role as Deputy Dean, as well as Dr. Cervin on her broadened role as Senior Associate Dean,” says Dr. Roger Strasser, NOSM Dean. “The range of skills, breadth of experience, and level of commitment to distributed community-engaged learning and health research demonstrated by both of these individuals has undoubtedly contributed to the high calibre of learning experiences at the School.”

About Dr. David Marsh

Dr. Marsh graduated in Medicine from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1992, following prior training in neuroscience and pharmacology. In July 2010, Dr. Marsh joined the Northern Ontario School of Medicine as Associate Dean, Community Engagement. He brings skills and experience with health-care administration, strategic planning, community-based research and social accountability as well as a personal background of Aboriginal ancestry to this role. Prior to moving to NOSM, David served as the Physician Leader, Addiction Medicine with Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care and Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Population and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia from 2004-2010. Previously, he held leadership roles at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto from 1996-2003. Author of over 70 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and government reports, Dr. Marsh’s research interests focus primarily on addiction medicine, methadone maintenance, heroin-assisted treatment, and harm reduction interventions such as supervised injection. He continues to be actively engaged in the development of research and supervision of graduate students at NOSM having received over $300,000 in research funding in the past three years for studies on Opioid Agonist Treatment in partnership with the Institutes of Clinical and Evaluative Sciences (ICES). In 2004, Dr. Marsh received the Nyswander-Dole Award from the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence in recognition of his contribution to this field. In addition, Dr. Marsh received the 2013 Physician Achievement Award from the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) Section on Addiction Medicine.

About Dr. Catherine Cervin

Dr. Catherine (Cathy) Cervin grew up in southern Ontario, went to medical school at the University of Toronto, finished her family medicine residency at Dalhousie and then practised full-scope family medicine in Northern Ontario (Timmins and Sault Ste. Marie) for seven years before embarking on an academic career in the Department of Family Medicine at Dalhousie. While at Dalhousie, Dr. Cervin took on a number of leadership roles. She became Hospital Chief of the Department of Family Medicine at the Grace Maternity Hospital (now the IWK Women and Children’s Health Centre), she was Residency Program Director for Family Medicine for ten years, and was the Interim Department Head of Dalhousie Family Medicine. As befits a generalist, her professional interests are wide ranging and include social accountability, educating for comprehensive primary care, curriculum development, learning portfolios, communication skills and cultural competency. Her clinical interests include primary maternity care, the patient-centred approach, and chronic disease care.

Recognized by her peers and colleagues, Dr. Cervin received a Certificate of Merit from the Canadian Association of Medical Education in 2009 and also received an Award of Excellence from the College of Family Physicians in 2010. That same year, she completed her Masters of Medical Education. Dr. Cervin was also recently appointed as a new Director on the Board of the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS). Dr. Cervin also holds leadership roles at the College of Family Physicians of Canada as Chair of the Board of Examiners and Vice Chair of the Research and Education Foundation.