No medical school campus for you, Sault Ste. Marie!

Algoma may still get its own regional network, medical school dean says

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The dean and chief executive officer of Northern Ontario School of Medicine has thrown a bedside commode of cold water on Sault Ste. Marie's hopes for a local satellite campus.

Dr. Sarita Verma told SooToday this week that NOSM is more interested in online learning, preferring virtual clicks over old-school bricks.

In 2005, Sault Ste. Marie City Council approved a $25,000 study to develop a business case for a local campus of the north's medical school, including local scientific and clinical research.

In February of this year, Sault Ste. Marie's Dr. Janice Willett, a former Ontario Medical Association president, told city councillors of an ambitious pitch for a Sault-based Ontario Mental Health and Addictions Research and Training Institute being made to provincial officials.

"The institute would hopefully stimulate a NOSM campus," Dr. Willett said then.

"RIght now, NOSM has two campuses. It has a campus in Sudbury and a campus in Thunder Bay."

"Our dean... is hoping that this will be one of the springboards to allow us to expand further training positions for medical students, dietitians and others... that we train – and have a regional campus here," Dr. Williett said.

That was February.

But this week, after unveiling the third five-year strategic plan in NOSM's history, Dean Verma was singing a different tune.

"Despite the original notions of other campuses, that's probably not going to be the direction that NOSM is going in. We are now already fully distributed across 90 communities and two campuses in Thunder Bay and Sudbury," she said.

"The nature of the school is not really to have more of these infrastructure-based campuses. The nature of the school will be going to less buildings and more online and more virtual education."

The exception to that rule, Verma said, would be an increased emphasis on clinical education in hospital settings.

She said the medical school already offers teaching in Sault Ste. Marie at places like Sault Area Hospital, Group Health Centre, Sault Family Health Organization, Algoma Public Health and Superior Sleep Centre.

"We have a strong commitment to Sault Ste. Marie. We're involved in a number of initiatives that will help us build regional networks. That's in our plan."

"We recently did an assessment by a former assistant dean Sue Berry who looked at our capacity across all of our communities. We have the potential to build about five to seven regional networks. Algoma is certainly poised to become that kind of network."

Algoma deserves a strong NOSM presence, Verma said, not only because of local success there with education, but because of the fundraising prowess of local physicians, who have raised more than $400,000 for the school with their annual hockey tournament.

"We are definitely in discussions with the Sault initiatives, but I would say that it's extremely unlikely that we will be establishing campuses," Verma said.

"I'm sure there were many discussions like that in the origins of NOSM but I think now we're heading away from bricks and mortar as much as we're heading into investments into this kind of technology."

"This is a bit bumpy because we're bouncing between web spaces and videos and speakers. But eventually education could end up mostly being this way, with the exception of clinical face-to-face patient encounters," Verma said.

NOSM's latest strategic plan has four pillars: