A busy spring for Northern health professionals

As I write this, I am quite literally half a world away from Northern Ontario - in Calabar, Nigeria - attending the 8th Wonca World Rural Health Conference.

It is partly from attending global events such as these that I can make the claim, without exaggeration or fear of contradiction, that NOSM is leading the world in educational programs that prepare our graduates to meet the needs of their patients and the wider community, particularly in rural and northern settings.

One of the ways we do this is by organizing conferences and events of our own. Nearly two years ago in this column I noted how NOSM had created a new Rite of Spring for many in Northern Ontario - the annual admissions interview weekend held in Thunder Bay and Sudbury for hundreds of short-listed applicants to the School.

This year, it's North Bay's turn to host another annual NOSM event that has come to mark the start of summer for health professionals across the North. I refer to the Third Annual Northern Health Conference, or NHRC, which was held in early June in Sault Ste. Marie for the first two years of its existence.

An outstanding success both times, this year's conference will be co-hosted by Nipissing University and will take place on the Nipissing campus May 30 and 31. The NHRC is geared towards showcasing the research activities of Northern Ontario research scientists and health professionals.

I personally take great pleasure in attending the NHRC, not least because of the delightful mix of subjects presented. At one session, conference goers may hear from a bench scientist reporting on the identification of pharmacologically active molecules in plants, followed directly by a researcher who has studied the health effects of traditional drumming in aboriginal communities.

Where else but in Northern Ontario could one experience first hand such tremendous diversity in health research? In keeping with NOSM's founding precepts, the NHRC is committed to inclusivity and in maintaining focus on research activities within Northern Ontario arising from community-based activities.

The NHRC highlights research projects undertaken by students, residents and community-based researchers while providing opportunities for collaboration and community networking. Registration is still open, and all Northern health professionals, researchers, and interested individuals are welcome.

To learn more, visit our website at www.normed.ca

Another major event we are looking forward to early this coming summer is the International Conference Community Engaged Medical Education in the North (ICEMEN), which will be co-sponsored by NOSM and Flinders University, Australia.

This five-day conference on community-based medical education will be held in communities across the North from June 9 to 14. The conference will open in Sudbury, with two days devoted to the exploration of program delivery, curriculum, program management, faculty development, research and evaluation.

On the third day, conference participants will be distributed to the 10 host communities in Northern Ontario where NOSM third-year students spend their entire academic year. (These are: North Bay, Huntsville, Bracebridge, Sault Ste. Marie, Sioux Lookout, Fort Frances, Timmins, Parry Sound, Kenora and Temiskaming Shores.)

On the final two days, ICEMEN attendees will travel to Thunder Bay, where discussion will centre on clinical education sessions for students, residents and physicians. These CME-accredited sessions will discuss, among other subjects, how to teach clinical skills in a community environment.

ICEMEN will also include the third annual meeting of a group of Medical Schools that have introduced longitudinal integrated clerkships into their undergraduate curricula.

Dubbed the Consortium on Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship or CLIC, this group includes representatives from medical schools at the Universities of Minnesota, Washington, North Dakota, South Dakota, British Columbia, UC San Francisco, and Harvard, as well as Flinders and other Australian universities.

One of the highlights of ICEMEN will be a presentation by Dr. Paul Worley, now Dean of Medicine at Flinders University in Australia. Very little documentation had been done on the practice of rural-based longitudinal community clerkships until Paul wrote a ground-breaking thesis on the subject.

Another high-profile participant will be Dr. Molly Cooke, a Senior Scholar with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Cooke has conducted an intensive study of innovative Third Year Medical School programmes, and is now charged with reviewing the whole of North American Medical School Education, most of which is still based on the Flexner Report, which was published in 1910.

It is my personal belief that the sort of Comprehensive Community Clerkship offered at NOSM and at the handful of other schools in CLIC may soon help galvanize sweeping changes to medical education across North America.

But whatever that long term outcome may be, there is no doubt that the next few months will be exciting - and busy ones - for NOSM, and for those health professionals here in the North who elect to take part in these important upcoming events.