Ontario’s universities are partnering with communities to provide local training opportunities for doctors to work in rural and remote regions, as well as urban centres.
The Distributed Medical Education (DME) programs place medical learners in more than 300 communities across Ontario, allowing them to develop a skillset unique to practicing medicine in smaller, remote and rural areas and involving thousands of community physicians in educating the next generation of doctors.
For example, many students who were recently placed at the Winchester District Memorial Hospital in the small eastern Ontario village of Winchester were able to turn their hands-on learning experience into a career at the hospital. After being exposed to health-care delivery in a smaller region, they chose to continue serving the community where they learned.
A pipeline has been created for communities to recruit physicians who will help them meet their local health care needs today and in the future. The result of this approach has been a substantial increase in the number of physicians per 100,000 people in all regions of the province.
