Welcome
Local Education Groups Across Northern Ontario
Local Education Group (LEG)
A LEG is a group of physician clinical faculty who have joined together to assume responsibility for the provision of a significant, identifiable component(s) of NOSM's current academic mandate. LEGS work closely with the NOSM Undergraduate and Postgraduate Associate Deans to ensure the academic/curriculum needs of the learners are met. To date, 52 LEGs have been implemented and approved in Northern Ontario.
Purpose
The purpose of the LEGs is to provide the physician clinical faculty with an organization structure to address the challenges of balancing the demands for the provision of academics and clinical services. It is also intended to facilitate the ongoing delivery of the NOSM academic mandate by the physician clinical faculty.
Background
Alternative Funding Plans (AFPs) in Ontario are funded by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) to support the clinical teaching activities of physicians, thus ensuring sufficient clinical learning opportunities to the next generation of physicians. Although AFPs have existed at other Ontario medical schools since the 1990s, Ontario's newest medical school, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM), has a unique mandate and mission to train physicians for rural and northern communities.
NOSM's distributed medical education (DME) model - with two campuses more than 1000km apart in Sudbury and Thunder Bay, and clinical learning taking place in over 70 communities across northern Ontario - indicated the need for a different approach to supporting clinical faculty. [1-3] Instead of a single centralized governing body to administer the funds, the NOSM AFP is implemented through Local Education Groups (LEGs). LEGs are self-organized groups of NOSM clinical faculty who are responsible for providing selected medical education services at the undergraduate and/or postgraduate level. LEGs also support other academic activities such as professional development, research and clinical innovation. [4,5] An independent organization, the Northern Ontario Academic Medicine Association (NOAMA), administers the LEGs Initiative, through a negotiated agreement between the MOHLTC, the Ontario Medical Association (OMA), the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM), and the Physician Clinical Teachers Association (PCTA).
Groups interested in applying to be a LEG
Contact Michelle Labate at mlabate@noama.ca for information on how to apply.
*Monitoring and Evaluation Framework For the Local Education Groups (LEGs) Initiative by Jill E. Sherman, M.P.H. and Wayne Warry, Ph.D. from Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research at Laurentian University