University of Alberta Launches Innovative Medical Education Program to Address Doctor Shortages in Underserved Areas
From in-class lessons to in-clinic experiences, future doctors in northern Alberta can now take their full University of Alberta medical education closer to home as a first step to practicing medicine in their own communities.
Applications are now open for the Fall 2025 term of the new Northern Alberta Medical Program (NAMP), with the chance for students to train in Grande Prairie and other northern Alberta centres. The deadline for applications is October 1, 2024.
“Northern Alberta communities need people who have that northern perspective, who feel like their heart is there and they want to stay there,” says Darryl Rolfson, associate dean of undergraduate medical education for the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, and an internal and geriatric medicine specialist who practices in Athabasca, Westlock and Edmonton. “The long-term goal is to have a sustainable cohort of doctors that are locally trained and want to stay in and be part of the north.”
Students in NAMP will train as generalists, which includes family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, general surgery and psychiatry. The first two years will be taught in person or virtually at Northwestern Polytechnic and the adjoining Grande Prairie Regional Hospital. The next two years will be primarily hands-on, practical experience under the supervision of teaching doctors, known as preceptors, at clinics across northern Alberta.
The team is recruiting facilitators and preceptors from every northern community with a hospital, including High Level, Manning, La Crete, Fort Vermilion, Spirit River, Fairview, Grimshaw, Glendon, Athabasca, Barrhead, Swan Hills, Wabasca, Slave Lake, Boyle, Whitecourt, Mayerthorpe, Fox Creek, and the Cold Lake area.
Rolfson hopes to inspire high school students to consider NAMP in the future. But he also encourages people trained as paramedics or in other health-care fields to apply, knowing they won’t have to move to Edmonton in order to complete their degree.
U of A med school enrolment will bump up by 30 learners to 192 per year, thanks to new provincial funding and a partnership between U of A and Northwestern Polytechnic. The NAMP mirrors a new partnership between the University of Calgary and the University of Lethbridge to offer similar training to southern Alberta students. Dr. Richard Martin, a family doctor from Grande Prairie, has just been named head of NAMP.