Northern Routes

These days, leadership means dealing with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity—also known as VUCA.

Extraordinary leadership is the key to building high-quality health care and medical schools. However, when it comes to developing a medical career, acquiring the skills of leadership is traditionally not valued as highly as the technical and academic competencies. At NOSM, we are focusing on helping our learners, faculty and staff to become great leaders. Organizations are demanding that physicians have a higher capability for leadership in order to face the challenges of modern health care. A report by the Institute of Medicine recommends that academic health centres “develop leaders at all levels who can manage the organization...

Keep a positive outlook and look for silver linings.

Hello, Aanin, Boozhoo, Bonjour! The sun is setting much earlier here in Northern Ontario. The tamaracks are now ablaze in gold and with the second wave of the pandemic upon us, what keeps you up at night? Here’s what’s on my mind and what keeps me, as your Dean, up at night. 1. Getting through an unpredictable and volatile pandemic. COVID-19 has caused many Canadians to change their everyday lives to help “flatten the curve” and avoid a spike in cases that would overwhelm our health services. For some of you, that will mean you must self-isolate for two weeks, for others, it will mean that you are now working from home ...

Hello, Bonjour, Aanii

My name is David Marsh, Clinical Sciences Professor at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and an Addiction Medicine physician. While I have held various leadership positions at NOSM over the past ten years, since early 2020 I have been the Associate Dean, Research, Innovation and International Relations. Dr. Verma asked me to contribute to her blog this week to discuss the importance of research at NOSM. It has been a difficult several months for many of us with the global pandemic having an impact on our daily lives. Research activities at NOSM were temporarily halted in March and I want to express my appreciation and thanks fo...