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International Workshop on Physician Recruitment and Retention

The Northern Ontario School of Medicine was founded on the idea that if you train physicians in the North, they will stay in the North
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The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM)
The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) today hosted the Remote Rural Workforce Stability Forum, an international, multi-site forum on physician recruitment and retention. The forum focused on recruitment and retention of the health workforce in rural and remote communities and the role of medical schools, health service organizations, communities, and government in creating workforce stability.

NOSM was established to address the health needs of Northern Ontarians, improve access to quality care and contribute to the economic development of the region. Physician recruitment and retention has long been one of the most pressing concerns in the North.
 
“The Northern Ontario School of Medicine was founded on the idea that if you train physicians in the North, they will stay in the North. While that strategy is making a difference—94 per cent of graduates who have completed both their MD and residency programs are practicing in Northern Ontario—there are still many small communities struggling to maintain medical services,” said Dr. Roger Strasser, Dean, and CEO at NOSM.  
 
Attendees learned about the Making it Work Framework and case studies carried out in each of the participating countries and also participated in a Knowledge Transfer in Action session, integrating key learnings from international rural health human resources work to the Northern Ontario Physician Resources Action Plan developed over the past year as a result of Summit North—a symposium  in January 2018 that brought together policymakers, educators, administrators, community members and clinicians from across Northern Ontario to address the issue of health workforce recruitment and retention in rural and remote communities.
 
The Action Plan builds on existing recruitment and retention strategies across the region. At NOSM, several measures are in place to support physician recruitment and retention: encouraging high school students from rural and remote communities to see a career in health care as an opportunity that’s available to them; an admissions process that favours applicants from Northern Ontario and reflects the population distribution of the region; a distinctive Distributed Community Engaged Learning model that places students in communities so they focus on responding to the health needs of the population; involving rural generalist faculty members as principal clinical teachers and role models; and having a rural and remote First Nations stream in our family medicine residency program.