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Norway House med student, part of new U of M class, hopes to help fill 'dire need' for northern docs
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More than 100 of Manitoba's newest medical students were cloaked in fresh white coats on Wednesday, including one student from northern Manitoba who says his dream is to serve people in remote and undeserved communities in that region.
"I want to eventually get back up north," said first-year University of Manitoba medical student Jesse McGregor, who is from the Norway House Cree Nation, after receiving his white coat during a ceremony in Winnipeg.
"I want to be able to help the people that built me into who I am today."
The ceremony is part of a time-honoured tradition that welcomes students to their first year at university's college of medicine.
McGregor said he knows his home community, about 460 kilometres north of Winnipeg, and other northern communities often struggle to recruit and retain physicians, and he hopes to one day be part of the solution to that problem.
"It is a community that is in dire need of adequate health-care services," McGregor said.
"Over the years it's really improved, but I want to contribute to that overall mission of increasing adequate health care in the north."
McGregor now joins 136 students set to begin studying medicine at the university, says Peter Nickerson, the dean of the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences and the Max Rady College of Medicine.
"It's a very diverse class. They're from all over the province, and there's a few students from out of province," Nickerson said.
Among the students getting their white coats Wednesday were 10 Indigenous students, said Nickerson, and he hopes to see those numbers rise in the coming years.
"We always like to have more and more Indigenous students. We recognize that's a major gap that we have in our cohort," he said.
"We know that the Indigenous population is around 20 per cent, so we expect to have 20 per cent of our students be Indigenous, so that we can actually serve the communities that we represent.
"This class is putting us on that path that we're trying to achieve."
Manitoba has struggled to attract and retain doctors. In 2023-24, the province saw a net increase of 133 physicians — the largest on record, according to Doctors Manitoba — but a report from the advocacy group, citing Canadian Institute for Health Information data, said the province still ranks second-last among physicians per capita in Canada, with 219 physicians per 100,000 residents.
Nickerson said he hopes many students in the new cohort, who will begin classes next month, will stay and practise in this province once they graduate.
"It's a long journey," he said. "But along the way they'll be seeing patients, providing care and being part of the communities here.
