SUDBURY, ON, Oct. 4, 2012 /CNW/ - Next week, beginning Tuesday, October 9, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) will host a major six-day world conference—Rendez-Vous 2012—in Thunder Bay and in communities across Northern Ontario. Over 850 delegates are expected to attend from 45 different countries, including 150 health professional schools, to share experiences, opportunities, and challenges of community participation in education, service, and research.
Among many topics, conference delegates will explore issues related to rural, remote and underserviced health care, social accountability as it relates to health professional education, and the engagement of communities in the processes of educating future physicians and health professionals. The conference provides the opportunity for delegates to visit community partners across the City of Thunder Bay and surrounding area, and travel to Nipigon, Cochrane, Hearst, Manitoulin Island, Marathon, Sioux Lookout, Sudbury, and Wawa to experience first-hand NOSM's distributed model in action.
Rendez-Vous 2012 is not like any other meeting before it, as it brings several world health and medical education organizations and annual conferences together for the first time. Rendez-Vous 2012 will bring together the Wonca World Rural Health and The Network: Towards Unity for Health annual conferences, as well as the next NOSM/Flinders conference on Community Engaged Medical Education, the Consortium for Longitudinal Integrated Curricula, and the Training for Health Equity Network.*
"The Northern Ontario Schools of Medicine is absolutely thrilled to be welcoming the world of innovation in health professional education to Northern Ontario," said Dr. Roger Strasser, NOSM Dean. "Many of the delegates participating in Rendez-Vous 2012 share NOSM's commitment to the socially accountable education of high quality physicians and health professionals with an affinity to practise in underserved rural and remote regions, for which NOSM is recognized globally as a leader."
The NOSM model of distributed, community-engaged learning and research has many lessons to share with underserviced areas around the world. When it opened its doors in 2005, NOSM became the first and only medical school in Canada to have a social accountability mandate, which guides the School to be accountable to the needs of the people and communities of Northern Ontario. Seven years later, NOSM's distinct model of distributed, community-engaged model of learning and research is working as intended. NOSM-trained physicians are opening practices, joining family health teams, and providing locum support for communities across Northern Ontario.
* See Backgrounder on Rendez-Vous 2012 Conference Organizations for more information.
** See Backgrounder on Northern Ontario School of Medicine for more information.
To view this media release in French, please visit www.nosm.ca/mediareleases
PDF available at: http://stream1.newswire.ca/media/2012/10/04/20121004_C4215_DOC_EN_18880.pdf
SOURCE: Northern Ontario School of Medicine
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Kimberley Larkin
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Lisa Kokanie
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