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 regional 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).