Community Stories

Two Northern Ontario communities share successes with recruitment

Sault Ste. Marie and Sioux Lookout are great places to work—and the word is getting out Dr. Mara Boyle didn’t originally think that her career would lead her to family medicine—or to Sioux Lookout. Plans changed when her third year of NOSM University’s MD program brought her to the small town, four hours north of her hometown of Thunder Bay. “I didn’t really want to be a family physician when I arrived in Sioux Lookout in my third year. I thought that I was going to become a specialist,” Dr. Boyle explains. “One of the aspects of working in Sioux Lookout is that you practise a broad scope of family medicine. I found it...

Read about two Northern Ontario communities successes with recruitment.

Great things happen when good people come together

A reflection on community learning experiences in Marathon All of us can make contributions to communities, no matter where we are. Medical professionals and medical learners often have skills, interests, ideas, and energy to contribute to community life beyond what they offer in health care. This summer, Logan Brennan, fourth-year NOSM University medical student, spent two weeks on a rural generalist elective in Marathon. Coincidentally, one of the high school volleyball coaches was hosting a volleyball camp in preparation for the coming season. Logan—who has played at the varsity level and was a member of the Canadian National m...

Marathon doctor advises medical students to keep open mind about rural practice

Had she taken another path, Dr. Lily DeMiglio would probably be practising medicine in her hometown of Sault Ste. Marie. That’s what she first thought she’d do after graduating from NOSM University’s MD and family medicine residency programs. Little did she know that a community about 400km north of the Soo on the North Shore of mighty Lake Superior would win her heart. Dr. DeMilgio says she always found Marathon to be very charming, but more than that, she fell in love with the broad scope of work she could practise as a rural generalist: from inpatient care to the emergency room, to work in the clinic and with First Nations co...