Training Sites

Thunder Bay Regional Hospital is the referral centre for all of North Western Ontario. It has a full complement of Internal Medicine services. Your subspecialty rotations will be one on one with your preceptor. Your days will be a mixture of inpatient consults, procedures, and clinic. Teaching will be based on you reading around cases and discussions around patients with your preceptor. In such a small medical community you will have to opportunity form close relationships with staff and residents from other specialities. This assures you will be called when interesting cases come into the hospital.

Our Medical Clinical Teaching Unit (MCTU) is staffed  by both Subspecialists and General Internists. Your team will have the unique opportunity to care for a roster of 10-15 Most Responsible Physician (MRP) patients and 5-10 consult patients admitted to other services. Your team consists of a Junior Attending, Senior Medical Resident, and Junior Medical Resident as well as 1-3 PGY1s and 2s from other specialities and  2-3 medical students. Senior residents and Staff will lead daily bed side physical examination , noon rounds and regular teaching sessions. On Thursdays we have ICU rounds, and Fridays are Chest Rounds. In the evening you will be on call by yourself overnight with support of your preceptor over the phone. You will typically see 4-6 consults in a call shift. In addition we provide a procedure service to the hospital including paracentitis, thorocentisis, joint aspiration, and lumbar puncture.

Our hospital divides consults with a hospitalist service. This assures we see the most interesting and more acute patients.  Our Gastroenterology, Respirology, Rheumatology, Endocrinology, and  Infectious Disease services do not admit patients, so we get the chance to care for the most complicated, interesting and  unusual cases  from these specialties. We also accept regional referrals community hospitals. These patients tend to be quite complicated and present in later stages of disease

In addition, there will be many opportunities for you to teach as a PGY1 on MCTU as well as at the medical school.

NOSM has a thriving resident social committee shared by family medicine, obstetrics, general surgery, orthopedic surgery, psychiatry, emergency medicine, and anesthesia. We plan trips on a quarterly basis, holiday parties, and social events.

Thunder Bay is an outdoor paradise located on the shore of Lake Superior the world’s largest fresh water lake. It is adjacent to beautiful landscapes such as the iconic Sleeping Giant Provincial Park. You have hiking, camping, downhill skiing, cross country skiing, boating, sailing, rock climbing, ice climbing, fishing and much more at your door step. Thunder Bay is located 60 km from Minnesota USA, and 700 km from Winnipeg MN. It has an international airport served by Air Canada, Porter, West Jet, US Airways and Bearskin Airlines with 6-8 flights per day to Toronto. Thunder Bay has many great restaurants in any price range. It has a large student population with both Lakehead University and Confederation College. A physician recruiter is available to answer any further questions you may have.

For more information about Thunder Bay, visit the City of Thunder Bay website.

Health Sciences North is a modern tertiary health care facility located adjacent to Ramsey Lake in the heart of Sudbury that serves as the major referral centre for a large number of communities in Northeastern Ontario. Similar to Thunder Bay, the resident experience in Sudbury involves a mix of inpatient care (including medical and cardiac critical care), and outpatient clinics (general medicine and subspecialty). Due to the relatively small number of post-graduate trainees compared with most training centres, all rotations in Sudbury involve regular daily 1 on 1 interaction with preceptors and the opportunity to participate directly in the care of complex, undifferentiated medical cases. Residents working in Sudbury will discover that they quickly develop close relationships with staff and other residents from all departments.

The clinical teaching unit is an inpatient general medicine service at Health Sciences North comprised of one rotating staff physician (General Internist or Subspecialist trained in Internal Medicine), 1-2 Senior Medicine Residents (PGY2 or PGY3, Internal Medicine), 3-4 Junior Residents (PGY1 Internal Medicine or off-service), and 3-4 Clinical Clerks (4^th year medical students from NOSM). Compared to other teaching hospitals where there may be 3 or 4 MCTU teams, there is only one MCTU team here at NOSM.  We will typically be responsible for the care of 20-25 patients with a variety of acute medical illnesses. During your time on MCTU, you will encounter patients with a wide range of clinical problems including complex multisystem diseases. The primary objective of this rotation is to train our residents to become comfortable recognizing and dealing with the many underlying issues that exist in these patients and contribute to their admission to hospital. Residents also learn how to approach the most commonly encountered problems in Internal Medicine, a skill that is practical and will serve them well for the rest of their careers.  Our intention is always to admit patients to the MCTU that will serve as good “learning cases” however; it is generally true that no matter how straightforward something seems at first, there are always new things to be learned from each and every patient. As with Thunder Bay, we do not have subspecialty call so the majority of interesting medical cases admitted through the emergency department will come to our MCTU service.

Most residents consistently say that they learn more in one week on the MCTU in Sudbury than in an entire block on other services! This is because we make every effort to make resident learning the priority. Our senior staff physicians and senior medicine residents are passionate about internal medicine and will do everything they can to make the experience on MCTU a good one. Our goal is to create a collegial and supportive environment where as residents; we can teach and learn from one another.

Sudbury is similar to Thunder Bay in that its residents have immediate access to hiking, camping, downhill skiing, cross country skiing, boating, rock climbing, fishing and much more all within the city limits. Health Sciences North is situated adjacent to beautiful Ramsey Lake which offers swimming, sailing, rowing, kayaking, and a 3 km ice skating path in the winter. Sudbury is home to the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) Sudbury Wolves and is a concert stop for many top performers. Sudbury is located less than 4 hours driving distance from Toronto and 5.5 hours from Ottawa. It also has an international airport served by Air Canada, Porter, and Bearskin Airlines. Sudbury also offers a range of popular restaurants and is home to a large student population with Laurentian University and Cambrian College located within the city.

For more information about Sudbury, visit the City of Greater Sudbury website.