Please note that the application guides and websites are currently in the process of being updated for the next application cycle. Please refer to the guides and websites once the application cycle opens in July for information about that specific application cycle.
The Queen’s-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program is a new, first-in-Canada medical education model specifically designed to address the shortage of family doctors. It aims to graduate practice-ready, community-focused physicians able to provide comprehensive care to patients in southeastern Ontario. The program will be based at the Queen’s satellite campus at Lakeridge Health in Durham Region and aims to launch with 20 new medical school seats in Fall 2023.
Queen’s University’s School of Medicine has partnered with Lakeridge Health for many years, creating a satellite campus to train future physicians. Building on this long-standing partnership, Queen’s University and Lakeridge Health will help address the primary care physician shortage in southeastern Ontario by taking a novel approach to medical education through the Queen’s-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program.
The Queen’s-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program is a new, first-in-Canada medical education model specifically designed to address the shortage of family doctors. It aims to graduate practice-ready, community-focused physicians able to provide comprehensive care to patients in southeastern Ontario. This program will be based at the Queen’s satellite campus at Lakeridge Health in Durham Region.
Queen’s University students will undergo classroom training at Lakeridge Health and engage in workplace experiences embedded in communities across the region. This area stretches from Oshawa to Peterborough to Perth, Smiths Falls and Brockville.
This new, concentrated-training model will develop community-focused family doctors who are specialized in offering comprehensive care to a wide variety of patients. This program differs substantially from the standard MD program in design, curricular delivery, purpose of electives, and freedom from the need for postgraduate residency matching. For these reasons, transfers to other programs, including the standard Queen’s MD Program at the Kingston site, will not be feasible.
The Queen’s-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program is designed for students who know they want to become family physicians.
Training to purpose, this program will seamlessly integrate the training of medical students through to practice readiness.
Directed toward training in community-based Family Medicine, the program will have several unique features, including:
- A deliberate Family Medicine focus guiding the overall curricular design and delivery.
- Small class size, allowing for individual attention and close connections with faculty and student colleagues.
- A prominent presence of practicing Family Physicians as teachers, curricular leads and student mentors.
- Early and frequent clinical placements intended to introduce students to the practice of Family Medicine in parallel and integrated with their didactic learning and skill development.
- Emphasis on the unique role of Family Physicians in our communities, including professional roles, social accountability, social determinants of health and health care advocacy.
- Orientation to the various clinical profiles available within Family Medicine, including enhanced skill development in topics such as: Addictions, anaesthesia, care of the elderly, emergency medicine, palliative care, sports medicine and women’s health, including intrapartum obstetrics.
Graduates of the MD portion of this program will be well prepared to enter Family Medicine Residency. Transition to Family Medicine training occurs under the authority and recommendation of the Queen’s Family Medicine Residency Program Committee once postgraduate entry requirements are met, including being eligible for educational license as per the CPSO.
Students will receive an offer from the Post Graduate Family Medicine Training program in year 3, conditional on successfully completing the MD program. Once that offer is accepted students will be able to transition into Queen’s Family Medicine Residency without entering the CaRMS matching process.
Durham region is home to The Queen’s-Bowmanville–Oshawa-Lakeridge (QBOL) Family Medicine Residency, which is 1 of the 4 highly acclaimed Queen’s University Family Medicine Postgraduate Programs sites (the others being Kingston and the Thousand Islands, Belleville- Quinte, Peterborough-Kawartha).
This pathway is the first-of-its-kind-in-Canada education and training approach that will help to address the ongoing physician shortage in many southeastern Ontario communities.
The application process prioritizes candidates with qualities that show their commitment to community and who want to establish a comprehensive family medicine practice.
- You are fully committed to a career as a family physician as this is a single-career selection program.
- You want to make a difference in the lives of people in your community and create positive social change.
- You value a unique learning opportunity with a dedicated focus on comprehensive family medicine.
- You want to learn in the community, as well as in the classroom, alongside doctors in practice.
- You are adaptable, welcome change, and relish the challenge of a career where you see something different every day.
Please note that the application guides and websites are currently in the process of being updated for the next application cycle. Please refer to the guides and websites once the application cycle opens in July for information about that specific application cycle.
For intake Fall 2023, applicants must have already applied to the MD program at Queen’s through OMSAS. All potential applicants have received an email outlining the process on January 9, 2023. This email contains the “Intent to Apply” form.
Please note: Military Medical Training Program and international applicants are NOT eligible to apply.
1. Applicants must complete and submit the Intent to Apply form by January 23, 2023.
2. During the week of January 23rd-27th, the Queen’s-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program Admissions office will email each applicant a link to a supplemental application to complete.
If you have completed an Intent to Apply form and have recognized that this program is not suitable for you or does not meet your career goals, please do not complete the supplemental application or referee contact detail form.
3. You will also receive a link to a second form asking for the names and contact details of three referees. The Queen’s-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program Admissions office will send a separate supplemental referee form to three referees. Candidates must provide three referees who can speak to their suitability for this specific family medicine stream (Note: these references are in addition to those supplied via OMSAS. The same referees can be used however it will be a different reference form that needs to be completed).
4. Candidates must ensure that all application forms are submitted by the appropriate deadlines. Any incomplete applications will not be considered.
Deadlines:
Step 1: Intent to apply must be completed by January 23, 2023, at 11:59 pm EST
Step 2: Referee contact detail form must be completed by January 31, 2023, at 11:59 pm EST
Step 3: Supplemental application must be submitted by February 20, 2023, at 11:59 pmEST
Step 4: Supplemental references must be submitted by February 28,2023, at 11:59 pm EST. UPDATE: Supplemental reference deadline has been extended to March 3, 2023 at 11:59 pm EST.
How does this impact my current MD application? Applicants may apply to both the general MD program and the Queen's-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine program and will be considered for both. Applicants to both programs may recieve an offer to each program.
Important Update
This program has received full and unanimous approval from the Senate of Queen’s University on March 28, 2023
Eligibility requirements
In order to be eligible for the Queen's-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine program in fall of 2023, you must have submitted a complete application through OMSAS to the Queen's MD program and met all required deadlines. If an application was submitted but is incomplete or required OMSAS deadlines were not met, your application to Queen's-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine program will not be considered.
Those that who applied through the Military Medical Training Program or as International students are not eligible for this program.
You must complete the Intent to apply form, the supplemental application and the supplemental referee form in order to be considered.
Admission procedures are reviewed annually and requirements from previous years may not apply. Queen’s University reserves the right to change admission requirements at any time, without notice. Submission deadlines are final, and the instructions provided on OMSAS and this Queen’s-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program page must be followed for your application to be considered. When you submit an application to the Queen’s-Lakeridge Health Family Medicine Program, you accept the current admission policies and procedures, as well as the methods by which the applicants are selected.
Communication protocols
Communication with applicants will be through the email address provided in your OMSAS application. As such, it is your responsibility to monitor your email and all associated email folders (inbox, spam, junk, etc.) during the application process. This includes ensuring that email inboxes and associated folders are not full and are able to receive incoming mail. We are not responsible for any correspondence that is not answered by stipulated deadlines.
Applicants, prospective applicants or other individuals with inquiries about our program are expected to conduct themselves throughout their interaction with our office and/or the application process in a manner that is respectful to the community, our faculty, and our staff.
Please note that all inquiries related to Queen's-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program admissions should be directed to MDFMprog@queensu.ca. Sending multiple emails to various individuals at Queen’s University regarding admissions inquiries to our program will not speed up the response time in any way and will only cause further delays. Please also respect our response timelines indicated in our automatic replies. The Admissions Team tries to respond to your inquiries within those timelines.
Applicants or their family members, delegates and friends are not to contact the Dean, School of Medicine, Associate Dean, MD Program, or Associate Dean, Graduate & Postdoctoral Education directly or indirectly in any form/method/manner regarding the application process or their application. To do so, will be considered a breach of professionalism and any such contact or overtures will be noted and may jeopardize the individual’s application.
Please note that we do not respond to third party inquiries that are sent on behalf of an applicant.
The MD Program at Queen’s University’s School of Medicine is fully accredited by the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS) and the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) - the bodies that accredit MD programs in Canada and the United States. As such, the Admissions Office adheres strictly with the following CACMS standard:
The final responsibility for accepting students to a medical school rest with a formally constituted admission committee. The authority and composition of the committee and the rules for its operation, including voting privileges and the definition of a quorum, are specified in bylaws or other medical school policies. Faculty members constitute the majority of voting members at all meetings. The selection of individual students must not be influenced by any political or financial factors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. You must have submitted all of the required information for your MD application by the specified deadlines in order to be considered for the Queen's-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program.
No. Transfers between campuses will not be permitted.
The program will be housed primarily at the LHEARN Centre, located at the Oshawa Site of Lakeridge Health, and include learning opportunities at clinical sites and practices in the Durham Region. The LHEARN Centre has excellent teaching and learning facilities similar to those at the Kingston campus, scaled for the smaller class size, including a simulation lab. Students will be occasionally taken to Queen's campus for unique learning experiences, including visits to the Anatomy Lab.
If you did not receive an interview invite to the MD (Kingston campus) program, it does not impact your application to the Queen's-Lakeridge Health MD FM program. The admissions process for the MD program at the Kingston campus is separate from the admissions process for the Queen's-Lakeridge Health MD FM program. Interview processes are different for each program. Applicants may receive an interview invite to one or both programs.
Your applications to the two programs will be handled separately, so you could be accepted to either, or both. Offers of admission will be made as positions become available and may or may not be recivced at the same time. The applications to the two programs are being processed separately as there are different selection criteria evaluating different attributes. The selection criteria for the Queen’s-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program are specifically designed for a career in Family Medicine.
We will be identifying the following:
- Academic eligibility as defined on our website. We will be regarding this as a threshold that we feel defines a capable learner, not as a competitive metric to stratify candidates.
- Commitment to a career in community-based family medicine.
- Suitability to a career as a community-based family physician.
It will be carried out in parallel with the process for the MD program, first round offers will be sent May 9th.
Our intent for Fall 2024 will be to have this application process available to everyone through the OMSAS application site which opens July 2023.
Be sure to check here for updates!
You can learn more about Lakeridge Health by visiting the website.
The Lakeridge Health campus will be an extension of Queen’s University School of Medicine. Additionally, the curriculum will be able to take advantage of smaller class size and utilize classroom-based instruction, small group learning and access to educational sessions from the Kingston campus. There will be opportunities to engage with the main campus through shared educational sessions and on-site visits for targeted basic science and clinical teaching sessions. A key feature differentiating the Lakeridge Health cohort with be the more extensive and earlier community-based placements. These will begin in year 1, expanding each year and fully into the clinical years.
Queen’s University’s School of Medicine has partnered with Lakeridge Health for many years, creating a satellite campus to train future physicians. Building on this long-standing partnership, Queen’s University and Lakeridge Health will help address the primary care physician shortage in southeastern Ontario by taking a novel approach to medical education through this program.
Take a tour of the hospital and explore the areas where you'll find Queen's residents working and learning at Lakeridge Health.
Questions about the Queen's - Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program? Please contact us at:
Tel: 613-533-6927