Northern Ontario School of Medicine University

Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare is proud to partner with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) University in helping train our future physicians and allied health professionals of northern Ontario.  Each year, our community hosts more than 100 medical students and residents as part of their training to become physicians.

NOSM University is committed to the education of high quality physicians and health professionals, and to international recognition as a leader in distributed, learning-centred, community-engaged education and research.

When the school welcomed its first MD students in September 2005, it became the first new medical school in Canada in over 30 years, and only the second new medical school in North America during a similar period. It is the first Canadian medical school hosted by two universities, over 1,000 kilometres apart.  NOSM University serves as the faculty of medicine for Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and Laurentian University in Sudbury.  The school has developed and delivers a distinctive model of distributed, community-engaged, and socially accountable, medical education.  In addition, NOSM University is the only Canadian medical school to be established as a standalone, not-for-profit corporation, with its own Board of Directors and corporate by-laws.

Across the region, NOSM University learners (medical students, residents, and learners from other health disciplines such as rehabilitation sciences, dietetics, and physician assistants) are gaining relevant clinical experience under the guidance of health professionals in community hospitals, clinics, and family practices. 

Every year, MAHC welcomes a small group of third-year medical students from NOSM University that complete a seven-month community clerkship with a variety of preceptors from our medical staff.  Clerkships give students experience in all parts of the hospital setting or family physician practice through learning by watching and doing.  They rotate through different medical specialties and treat patients under the supervision of physicians.

NOSM University's success is very much a result of many partnerships and collaborations with individuals, communities and organizations including Indigenous and Francophone, hospitals and health services, physicians and other health professionals, universities and colleges, information communication technology organizations, and other medical schools.  With learners distributed across the north, communities have a vital role in welcoming and supporting students so that they develop a better understanding of living and working in a northern Ontario community.