Welcome

Dr. Paul Winwood
Dr. Paul Winwood

It’s a pleasure to welcome you to our website. We invite you to learn more about our curriculum, and the various medical education and research initiatives delivered through the Northern Medical Program (NMP).

As a distributed site of UBC’s Faculty of Medicine, delivered in partnership with UNBC, our program is uniquely founded in the strengths, resiliency and vibrancy of those that live in Northern B.C. Through our program delivery at the NMP, and in alignment with UBC’s overarching commitment to social accountability, we strive to educate students who will succeed as practitioners in rural and northern communities.

Students in the NMP, together with their UBC peers, are trained within a spiral curriculum, which is made up of integrated courses delivered over the span of a four-year medical degree. Information is spread out and layered in order to build upon previous learning, rather than being taught in separate blocks.

Throughout their four years, NMP students are taught and supported by a close-knit medical education community in the north. Due to our smaller class size, with small numbers of learners assigned to each preceptor (teacher), our students often develop strong and long-lasting relationships with our local physicians.

We are very proud of our close connections to northern and Indigenous communities in our region. These help our students to gain a unique rural perspective through exposure to the health issues that people living and working in northern and remote environments face. Through learning experiences in our regional hospitals, clinics, Indigenous health centres and small health facilities, our students receive a very broad exposure to clinical medicine with tremendous opportunities to learn, develop and practice their skills. I truly believe that the breadth of skills and knowledge base that our students acquire in the NMP, combined with learning in environments with less immediate access to subspecialists, prepares them for any career in medicine and independent practice as well as any program across the world.

The Northern Medical Program is also home to a small but highly productive group of leading researchers who are spearheading projects focused on enhancing health care for those in the North, as well as across Canada and the globe. Spanning a spectrum of biomedical, clinical, population health, health service delivery and medical education research, their projects have garnered both local and national recognition, including regional partnership initiatives and provincial and federal funding grants.

The NMP is part of a larger family of UBC and UNBC health professions training programs. I am proud of our local connections across the continuum of medical education from undergraduate programs at UNBC, such as nursing and health sciences, to UBC residency programs in northern B.C. Additionally, we share close links with the Master of Physical Therapy - North program and the Master of Occupational Therapy – Northern and Rural Cohort, which are also delivered through the partnership between UBC and UNBC. And to encourage the next generation of health professionals, we help support the Northern Pathways to Medicine bursary and enrichment program (funded through the Northern Medical Programs Trust).

Our success as a program lies in the commitment of our dedicated staff, faculty and clinical preceptors, as well as our many community and health organization partners. I invite you to explore our website and, in particular, to take a look at our curriculum, student learning opportunities, and research pages.   

Dr. Paul Winwood
Regional Associate Dean, Northern BC, UBC Faculty of Medicine
Associate Vice President, Division of Medical Sciences, UNBC