Recruitment Activities
Embark on a journey through our recruitment sagas—here you will find the latest news and see our efforts to assemble the dream team of healthcare professionals for our community. Here’s a peek behind the scenes.
Northern Ontario School of Medicine University (NOSM U) visits Hearst
As part of the NOSM U Northeast community visits, Dr. Sarita Verma, President, Vice-Chancellor, Dean, and CEO of NOSM U, together with her team, met with the various members of our community which included family physicians, hospital administration, Nord-Aski Family Health Team, the town CEO and medical students to discuss the many University updates. There were also conversations about the successes and challenges within our hospital and community.
Montfort Hospital & Savoir Montfort visits Hearst
We got the opportunity to greet the staff from Montfort, Ontario's francophone academic hospital, Savoir Montfort, a knowledge institute, and Santé Montfort for a joint strategic planning process. They were conducting an extensive consultation process across the province to meet their provincial mandate and develop a 2024-2028 strategic plan that will guide them towards the Montfort 75th anniversary. The subjects we talked about were planning and supporting French-language health services, supporting the Government of Ontario in meeting their obligation under the French Language Act, their goal to help with French-language clinical placements for health professionals and lastly supporting research and teaching activities as well as conversations around how they could support our hospital directly.
McMaster KW & Area 2024 Family Medicine Recruitment Event
This type of event is one of the many opportunities where the recruitment coordinator gets to meet with the first- and second-year residents to talk about the opportunities in Hearst for electives, locum and permanent positions. It’s very important to have a presence at those events to share all the amazing options Hearst has to offer not only for employment, but also for the lifestyle that they can have.
Department of Family Medicine Job Fair in Ottawa
Every year, Melanie also attends this event to meet with the family medicine residents from University of Ottawa. Last year Melanie attended this event with Dr Marjolaine Talbot-Lemaire, University of Ottawa Alumni. This offered great support to bring a local family physician to bring her experience and answer many questions related to opening a practice in Hearst.
Western University Family Medicine Resident Retreat
This event is none like the others. The recruitment coordinator gets the spend 2 full days with the Family Medicine Residents. From dinner to karaoke this event is the perfect combination to get to know the residents a bit better. The event ends with a job fair, where we talk more about the financial incentives and the opportunities in Hearst.
NOSM U Learner Resources Fair
This year NOSM U organized a resources fair, where the recruiters got to meet with the first-year medical students. This happened during their orientation week, so they were just starting off. But it’s a great time to chat about 2nd year and 3rd year placements and what type of support Hearst can offer while they are in the community. We talked about offering fully furnished housing (which is a big deal), the steps we take to orientate them in our community and in various health care setting and we talked about the amazing hands on and one-on-one approach we offer our students.
Northern Constellations & Connections Conference
This conference is great to connect with physicians in NOSM U’s catchment area, which means we meet a lot of physicians that already work in rural and remote locations. There is also a handful of medical residents that participate to the training offered.
Society of Rural & Physicians of Canada Conference
This was Melanie’s first conference that she attended as a recruitment coordinator. It gave her great insight on what students, residents and physicians were looking for when taking with a recruiter. The information needed from the different services at the hospital and in clinic but also about the community. Since then, we have improved our resources, brought in some technology like QR Codes and perfected the 5 minutes elevator pitch, cause often that’s all you have! We haven’t attended this event since 2022, but we are hoping to be back in 2025. The selection of events, job fairs in differently specialties are almost unlimited. We are constantly re-evaluating the return on investment of all of these events, and trying to attend as many as we can through out the year.
Family Medicine Forum
We’ve attended this event only once, similar to the SRPC conference, the recruiter doesn’t always want to put her efforts in just one big conference. Some of these are very pricey to attend so we prefer to mix it up! This conference is the biggest family medicine conference, where physicians attend workshops and learn new skills. The year we attended, Dr Gauvin and Dr Fournier were both participates which gave Melanie a great opportunity to attend a social event organized by NOSM U for residents and staff only.
International CaSPR Career/Repatriation Expo
This is a new concept for small town recruiters in Northeastern Ontario, but other provinces and other larger communities in Southern Ontario have been recruiting oversees and in the United States for quite some time. The potential that this brings to our region is incredible. Last year was the first time ever that Hearst had a representant attend the RCGP conference in Glasgow, UK. This conference is the largest for family physicians in the UK. We then participated in the first ever CaSPR Repatriation Expo, where we met with over 240 Canadian medical students studying in Ireland. Working alongside other Canadian recruiters to connect with family physicians in the UK and share our opportunities and then to also connect with Canadians that want to come back to Canada for residency was an incredible experience. There is so much interest from UK GP’s to relocate to Canada so it’s important to be there to talk about our region and what we can offer. Unfortunately, the committee for RCGP won’t be inviting us back, but in true Canadian fashion, we found other ways to connect with UK GP’s.
Ontario Physician Recruitment Career Fair for UK GP’s
Another first in Ontario recruitment, we took matters into our own hands, by forming an Ontario Alliance (OPRA), we were able to then organize our own recruitment event. This year Melanie and Dr Talbot-Lemaire participated to the Birmingham, UK event, where they met with over 40 General Practitioners already showing interest in relocating to Canada to talk about what Hearst has to offer.
Update in General Surgery
Melanie, recruitment coordinator for HMRA alongside Nicole, the physician recruiter for Kapuskasing, attended this event to meet with general surgeons interested in doing locum work or relocating to the respective communities. They shared the many advantages of working in northeastern Ontario. The Alliance is currently working very closely with Kapuskasing as they share a payment contract for any surgeon interested in settling down in Hearst, Kapuskasing or Cochrane. This year, Melanie had the opportunity of addressing the entire group of surgeons with a short presentation about our region and our needs. It was very well received as many new conversations were had following this presentation.
Ontario Association of General Surgery
This event organized for general surgeons in Ontario, is a great way to meet with residents, new graduates and seasoned surgeons. We often meet up with familiar faces or surgeons that have already worked in Northeastern Ontario. OAGS are great partners to advocate for smaller hospitals in Northeastern Ontario and they also have a job board, where we can post our various job opportunities that is also shared on social media.
Community Comprehensive Clerkship (CCC)
Every year, in partnership with NOSM U, Hearst greets 3rd year medical students for their CCC. The students spend 7 months (September to March), in the community where they get to experience the different options of family medicine in a rural and remote setting. This year the group of physicians agreed to host three medical students instead of two. Our goal is to eventually have another resident select Hearst as their main residency location.
Electives for medical students and residents in Hearst
The best way to experience what Hearst has to offer is by coming to our community and living it. We also accept students and resident for electives from other universities that have an interest in rural and remote work. This year we had one Canadian student from Ireland, 1 third year student from University of Toronto and also a 2nd year resident from the University of Toronto. And again, our goal is to keep increasing these visiting electives as our team grows.