Alumni Stories

Accomplishment in the height of the pandemic

Dr. Jai Mashru is quietly celebrating a huge milestone. A graduate of NOSM’s MD Class of 2021, Jai feels a great sense of accomplishment to graduate during one of the most challenging years of his medical education, a year which he also says was the most rewarding. “I plan to give back to the community and give back to future learners in Northern Ontario. This is something that I want to do,” says Jai, who is the valedictorian of his class in Sudbury and the former president of the NOSM student council. Raised in Dryden, and having lived in Sudbury and Parry Sound, Jai says being matched to an internal medicine residency in Toro...

NOSM alumnus helps to end Atikokan’s doctor shortage

A few years ago, Atikokan was a town in crisis having only one full-time and one half time family physician for a population of approximately 2,800. The community relied heavily on a rotation of locums to meet its health-care needs. Today, the town has a stable physician workforce that is able to provide patient-centered care, continuity of care and, importantly, a supportive network for physicians. Dr. Shawn Minor is a graduate of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) MD Class of 2016 and completed his residency at University of British Columbia in 2018. Originally from Thunder Bay, Dr. Minor and his wife, with their young c...

Where are they now? Charter Class Alumna thrives in rural Francophone practice

Reflecting back, Dr. Lyndsay Berardi says her mother’s experience with breast cancer ignited her ambition to become a family physician. At the time, Lyndsay was a Francophone teenager in Kirkland Lake. Her mother’s diagnosis marked the beginning of many trips to Sudbury for cancer treatment, and for Lyndsay, it would chart the course of her career in medicine. “Even though I was relatively young, I was acutely aware of some of the inequities in accessing health care; having to drive three-and-a-half hours to go to Sudbury for my mother’s oncology appointments and there were times when I wouldn’t see her for six weeks becaus...