Applications for Northern Alberta Medical Program being evaluated

“You can think of the Northern Alberta Medical Program as a satellite campus of the University of Alberta medical program. It’s all one program. All of the people who apply are applying to the same program.”

“As they go through the process, people who are offered admission will be able to then choose which campus they will go to for their first two years of education.”

Applications opened in July and closed at the beginning of October.

Dr. Martin says there are usually 10 times as many applicants as there are seats. He says the University of Alberta usually gets around 2,000 applicants and 500-600 of them will be interviewed.

He adds as of next year, the U of A will have a total of 192 seats available.

Dr. Martin also says having a campus in Grande Prairie means a better chance of those trained here staying here.

He adds similar programs in Canada and around the world have seen this happen.

“It’s between two and three times as likely that if I am doing medical school, if I do it in a place like Grande Prairie or smaller, I have (a) two to three times higher chance that my career will now mean that I will be working in either the place I learned or a smaller place.”

Dr. Martin says programs like this allow students to find out that not only is it rewarding work, but the place they are studying becomes comfortable as they make connections in the community.

He adds the goal is to address the problems of physician shortages in this area.

“The goal of the Northern Alberta Medical Program is to help to educate learners so that they’re much more likely to become a generalist in the medical world.”

“That would include family medicine as a broad, generalist specialty, but also generalist specialists like a general surgeon like you might need here in Grande Prairie.”

Dr. Martin says they hope to train in others areas of need like internal medicine, psychiatry, and pediatrics to meet needs for this kind of care in smaller centres.

Recruiting is also underway in northern communities with hospitals to find people to help train the new students.

Dr. Martin says most practicing doctors have an interest in teaching so they can help create their own future colleagues.

“Most of the time, finding people who have an interest in teaching is not usually the obstacle, it’s coordinating all of the other pieces that can be challenging.”

“Medical education has been going on across the north part of Alberta, into (the) Northwest Territories, Yukon, all the way up to Inuvik for decades.”

“We just are trying to make sure that we increase the capacity of these smaller places to provide education to more people and that way, we can just make sure that more of the students have that experience in smaller places.”

Dr. Martin says there is always a need to have more people help with training.

by Curtis Galbraith

Applications for Northern Alberta Medical Program being evaluated

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