Duane Hicks
Two third-year medical students from the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) arrived in Fort Frances last week, and will be living and learning here for the next 30 weeks as they complete their comprehensive community clerkships.
Michael Long and Kevin Warwick underwent orientation last week, and officially were greeted by community members last Thursday evening with a reception at La Place Rendez-Vous.
Long, who hails from Thunder Bay and currently is attending the Lakehead campus of the NOSM, said he’s been impressed with “the new facilities that have been opened at the hospital and the renovations that they’ve done.”
“I think the physicians are quite fortunate to have the resources that are available to them at the hospital,” Long added. “And of the staff that I have met, they seem quite happy to working in Fort Frances.
“The overall sentiment was quite positive.”
Long is eager to learn during his comprehensive community clerkship here.
“One of the unique opportunities the school provides is the clerkship, and moving to somewhere like Fort Frances, you’re spoiled in that you have a dozen physicians and only two students,” he noted.
“And the actual breadth—there’s two surgeons here, a gynecologist, physicians with a lot of different interests, so that we can glean a lot of experience, and they can share all of their experiences with us that they’ve had in the past.
“I am excited about it,” he enthused.
Long, who has worked in the woodlands outside of Fort Frances during his previous career in silviculture, said his first impressions of the town are that it’s a scenic community that’s proactive in keeping itself clean and beautiful.
The 32-year-old Long, who’s come here with his wife, Karen, and three children, Mackenzie, Solomon, and Madelyn, said he’s looking forward to being a part of the community over the next 30 weeks, adding one of his sons is going to be playing in the IP2 hockey program this winter.
Warwick, meanwhile, got a degree in human biology in Alberta before relocating to Thunder Bay to attend the NOSM.
The 35-year-old said he’s looking forward to the learning opportunity here.
“It’s awesome. Where else can you go and have the opportunity to be one of two students amongst a whole bunch of physicians,” he remarked.
“Often, it’s the other way around.
“Everyone seems to know each other and it’s a group effort—everyone’s trying to help you foster your education,” he added.
“It’s amazing.”
Overall, Warwick said he’s been impressed with Fort Frances so far.
“It’s fantastic. I got to go sailing. Just look at the lake here, it’s calm as glass,” he noted, adding he’s been walking at Pither’s Point three times in five days just to soak in the beautiful scenery.
“It reminds me of a coastal town. I spent a few years in Oregon, and it reminds me of that,” Warwick added, noting he enjoys outdoor activities like hunting and fishing, the latter of which he hopes to do sometime during his eight-month stay here.
Over the 30-week period, the two students will work with physicians at La Verendrye Hospital and the Fort Frances Community Clinic, as well observe specialists and various local allied health-care professionals (i.e., chiropractors, dentists, speech pathologists, pharmacists, home care workers, etc.) thanks to an affiliation agreement between the NOSM and Riverside Health Care Facilities, Inc. to allow students to gain valuable hands-on practical experience in the Fort Frances area.
Dr. Jason Shack said the clerkship is a chance for the students to see what medicine has to offer.
“They don’t see a subset of medicine. They see, basically, whatever walks through the door,” he explained. “They often start off wondering whether they’re going to learn anything during the eight months, and then they find at the end of the eight months, they’ve learned quite a lot and there’s a lot to see.
“We [the physicians], as a group, enjoy having the students around,” Dr. Shack added. “They challenge us—they think we’re challenging them, but they keep us on our toes. They keep us ahead on many things.
“It’s a pleasure having them around,” he reiterated.
This is the third set of medical students who have come through here since 2007, with Dr. Shack noting he’s only heard positive comments from students in the past.
“There are people who didn’t know what they wanted to go into in the medical field—maybe they wanted to do anesthetics, maybe they wanted to do surgery—and they’ve come in and seen what small-town medicine is like,” he said.
“Now they want to go into family practice because they’ve seen what they can do, the variety of stuff they get to do.
“They’ve all found it to be a positive experience,” Dr. Shack stressed. “They’ve gone out knowing a lot more than they did when they started out, and well on their way to becoming physicians.”
Another aspect of having the medical students here is to get them used to working in Northern Ontario—and possibly have them come back here to practice down the road.
“That’s the intent of the school, that’s the intent of the program,” Dr. Shack said.
“If you take people from a place they consider home and train them in a place they consider home, which in this case could be Northern or Northwestern Ontario, they’re more likely to stay in that area, go back and practice in that area, and be happy practising in that area rather than wanting to return to the big city they consider home,” he reasoned.
