NOSM’s 64 New MD Students Travel the North during Orientation Week

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Yesterday officially marked the first day of classes for 64 new medical students at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM), following a week of travel to learn about the geographic, social, cultural, and linguistic diversity of Northern Ontario.

Orientation Week-or O-Week, as it is affectionately referred to at NOSM-is about so much more than helping students find their classes. NOSM’s newest group of students spend the week becoming immersed in the cultural, linguistic, and geographic diversity of the North. This is their introduction to NOSM’s wider campus of Northern Ontario, where they will live and learn for the next four years.

On Tuesday, August 25, NOSM students came together in Sudbury and travelled by bus to Nipissing First Nation. Warmly welcomed by a song from the Little Iron Drum Group, the students broke bread with community members, received an Elder teaching on smudging, and heard advice and encouragement on behalf of the Chief and Council at Nipissing First Nation. Finally, Dr. Brenda Restoule, NOSM faculty member, Aboriginal woman, and psychologist in the area shared information with the students about frameworks developed for First Nations’ Wellness.

On Wednesday, August 26, the MD students toured the Temiskaming Hospital, Haileybury Family Health Team, and the Centre de santé communautaire du Témiskaming. There, the students spoke with NOSM faculty and graduates working in the area about the realities and benefits of practising rural medicine with both French and English patients.

“I was a dietitian for 10 years before I applied to NOSM,” said Dr. Nichole Currie, NOSM graduate and faculty member during the tour of the Haileybury Family Health Team where she now works. “I did the third year of my MD in Temiskaming Shores and absolutely loved it. I love living in a small, rural setting, and I knew that I wanted to do family medicine with obstetrics. It was important for me to raise my family in a small town, but I love that it’s progressive, too.”

Finally, the students returned to Sudbury by bus for the NOSM Oath Ceremony. This ceremony introduces students to the obligations and high standards of their newly chosen profession. The NOSM Oath Ceremony familiarizes students with the Physician’s Oath (the modern version of the famous Hippocratic Oath), its meaning and importance, and begins their four years of medical education with the principles of the Oath in mind.

NOSM continues to meet its social accountability mandate, innovative education and research for a healthier North.  Admission to NOSM’s MD program is highly competitive, and members of this incoming class have been selected from over 2000 applicants with a class mean GPA of 3.83 (measured on a 4-point scale). Demographic characteristics of this class include:

• 89% are from Northern Ontario
• Remaining 11% are from rural and remote parts of the rest of Canada
• 8% are self-identified Aboriginal
• 20% are self-identified Francophone

Students will now get down to work and immerse themselves in all things NOSM-state-of-the-art smart classrooms and learning technologies, an integrated, collaborative approach to education, and distributed, community-based placements across Northern Ontario. Each of these elements helps to ensure that NOSM produces high-quality physicians with an appreciation for the unique health-care needs of Northern Ontario.