NOSM University
Originally a partnership between Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and Laurentian University in Sudbury, NOSM University is now Canada’s only fully independent medical school. The school’s flagship four-year medical program is grounded in community-based learning. Clinical training is offered in conjunction with health-care facilities across northern Ontario and students spend close to 40 per cent of their time in off-campus placements. NOSM also offers an asynchronous, online master of medical studies designed to provide health sciences students with the research skills they need to tackle health-care questions head-on.
The Northern Ontario Dietetic Internship Program, offered in collaboration with communities and facilities across northern Ontario, provides practical, hands-on dietetic experience to those who have graduated from an accredited nutritional program. A medical physics residency education program, a physician assistant program and a postgraduate residency program round out the offerings. “NOSM University is a place for change makers who want to be at the vanguard of healthy equity,” says president Sarita Verma. “We train highly skilled, innovative and compassionate doctors who choose to serve rural and northern Ontario. Close to half of our graduates practise family medicine at a time when Ontarians—and Canadians-—face a primary care crisis.Our graduates are culturally competent and carry the tenets of reconciliation and decolonization into their practices.”
In keeping with the school’s mission to improve the health of northern Ontarians, as of June 2023, 902 MDs (including 73 Indigenous and 179 francophone students), have graduated from NOSM, and more than half of these physicians have stayed in northern Ontario. With campuses located in Sudbury and Thunder Bay, NOSM students enjoy the wilderness of northern Ontario at their doorstep. The school does not offer residence, but does assist students if they require housing when doing compulsory placements outside their home community. Cost for the MD program is $23,243, plus an additional $799.43 in compulsory fees.
