Dr. Roger Strasser has had a distinguished career as a medical school administrator, having served as head of Monash University’s School of Rural Health in Australia and founding dean of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) from 2002 to 2019.
In this video, Dr. Strasser recalls the formative years of NOSM and the enormous challenges associated with realizing the dream of a medical school for Northern Ontario.
One of the biggest challenges was persuading Northerners that there really would be a Northern Ontario School of Medicine. It’s not uncommon, he tells us, “that the government makes an announcement and then nothing happens. Then they make the same announcement again and nothing happens, and eventually nothing happens. And just because I came over with my wife and five children from Australia, it still didn’t mean it would happen.”
Of course, it did happen and generated across the North a sense of empowerment because people thought “If we can do a successful medical school, we can do anything.”
The unique model of education at NOSM has students spending a considerable amount of time in smaller, rural communities across the North, including an eight-month Comprehensive Community Clerkship in their third year of studies shadowing family doctors and seeing patients.
The model has been largely successful in realizing the school’s primary goal of improving access to healthcare in Northern Ontario – the primary goal of the school – with the result that 92 per cent of graduates who also completed their residency in the North have chosen to practise in the region.
The distributed model of education at NOSM is costlier than most medical schools, so funding was big challenge requiring support from Northern Ontario municipal leaders, Indigenous communities and funding agencies like FedNor and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation.
Fortunately, studies have demonstrated that every dollar of taxpayer’s money spent on the school results in $2 of new economic activity in Northern Ontario.
Dr. Strasser cites a commitment to community engagement, “clarity about what we were there to do, a focus on community engagement and a commitment to quality” as the reasons for the school’s success. He also shares some thoughts on how to engage with the region’s Indigenous communities.