A graduation ceremony was held Friday for 31 Northern Medical Program graduates, the 11th graduating class since the program's inception.
This year's graduating class included 14 graduates from northern B.C.
Most of the graduates will enter family medicine residency programs in rural and smaller centres in B.C. and elsewhere in Canada. Others will enter specialties such as obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine, hematological pathology and general surgery.
Eight of the graduates of the program will go on to residencies in the north.
Both Jason Minh Nguyen and Megan Enos graduated on Friday. The two will begin their own residency programs before summer's end. Enos will start a family medicine residency in Prince George, while Nguyen will be heading down to Victoria to begin a residency in internal medicine.
Enos grew up between Kamloops and Barnhartvale, a rural community outside of Kamloops.
She said she was drawn to enrol in the NMP partly because she felt Prince George offered the best quality of life for her and her husband. It helped that the cost of living in Prince George was significantly lower than in other university towns, like Victoria or Kelowna.
"I'm not a big city girl," Enos said.
"This was the only site that allowed us to have property while I was still going to school."
Nguyen moved to Prince George from Ontario in his later teen years. Even before finishing high school, he knew he wanted to enter medicine. He began his medical career in the UNBC nursing program.
"I had the recommendation to do nursing first, just in case I couldn't get into med school, because med school's quite competitive," Nguyen said.
"I knew Prince George was offering a medical program, so I decided why not work towards that."
Both Enos and Nguyen were also drawn to the NMP because of the program's reputation for offering a high degree of firsthand experience in medicine.
"Our skills are usually on the higher-end because we've usually been in the (operating rooms) so we've got a lot more hands-on," Nguyen said.
"Oftentimes we're the first ones assisting, whereas in bigger centres that might not be the case."
While Nguyen is looking forward to his residency on Vancouver Island, he hopes his chosen specialty in internal medicine will one day allow him to practice locally.
"At the end of the day, I grew up as a small-town boy and that's part of the reason why I wanted to stay here for the Northern Medical Program," he said.
Paul Winwood, the associate vice president of the Northern Medical Program, said the program has graduated 281 students since 2008.
"We believe that training physicians in a rural environment prepares them for anything because you are relatively isolated when you practice in the north and in rural areas," Winwood said.
"These grads can go anywhere and practice with confidence."
Between the Northern Medical Program and the northern-based residencies, Winwood said 110 students have been trained in the north.
He said students who have completed both programs in the north tend to stay in the region.
"In terms of the retention, the best or the most effective way of retaining them is if they do this program, the Northern Medical Program, then they do a residency here. And if we look at the retention rates in the north from that, it's around 76 per cent," he said.
