Multi-Year Tracking Study of the Students and Graduates of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine
J.C. Hogenbirk, J.E. Sherman, M.G. Delmege, P.E. Timony, R.P. Strasser, R.W. Pong, H.F. Cheu, G. Tesson, E.F. Wenghofer, B. Minore, C.W. Sloan*, and O.M. Mian

This study is conducted jointly by the Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research (CRaNHR) and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM). This multi-year, multi-phase study follows students and graduates of NOSM during their undergraduate medical education, residency training and medical practice. The study uses surveys, interviews and administrative data to measure practice intentions and the proportion of students successfully completing the program, and soon will begin to measure the number of graduates practising in rural, remote and northern communities as well as the type of services that they provide in their practices. These findings will have implications for the funding and delivery of this novel way of training physicians for rural medical practice so as to improve access to and quality of medical care in these communities. The findings may be of interest to other provinces/territories and, indeed, other countries who share similar problems of recruiting and retaining physicians in underserved areas. This study is one of several research projects conducted by CRaNHR investigators and research partners that constitute a large, multi-year research program on the students and graduates of NOSM.

(funded by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care)

[On-going since 2005]



(Names in bold denote CRaNHR investigators and research staff. Names with an * denote former CRaNHR investigators and research staff.)