Context counts: medical education in rural areas, for rural practice
Prof Roger Strasser, Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Canada*
Recognising that medical graduates who have grown up in rural areas are more likely to practice in the rural setting, the Government of Ontario, Canada established a new medical school with a social accountability mandate to contribute to improving the health of the people and communities of Northern Ontario.
The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) actively recruits students who come from Northern Ontario or similar social and cultural backgrounds. The holistic cohesive curriculum is grounded in Northern Ontario and relies heavily on electronic communications to support Distributed Community Engaged Learning. In the classroom and in clinical settings, students explore cases from the perspective of family doctors in Northern Ontario. NOSM also provides rural family medicine residency training based in Northern Ontario communities.
The first entering class of 56 medical students began their studies in September 2005 and graduated in May/June 2009. 80–90% of each class come from Northern Ontario, and has a mean grade point average (GPA) of approximately 3.7 on a four-point scale, comparable with other Canadian medical schools. 70% of the first graduating class members are pursing predominantly rural family medicine residency training. Over 60% of NOSM family medicine graduates continue to practice in Northern Ontario.
NOSM graduates are skilled doctors who may undertake vocational training and medical practice anywhere, but have a special affinity for and comfort with becoming rural doctors in Northern Ontario.
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