CBU ready to open new medical school this fall

Tom Ayers · CBC News

· Posted: May 16, 2025 2:11 PM EDT | Last Updated: 29 minutes ago

Cape Breton University has sent retired letters of connection to 30 students and says it is acceptable to unfastened a caller aesculapian schoolhouse this fall.

A caller gathering astatine CBU is scheduled to unfastened successful October successful conjunction with Dalhousie University's aesculapian schoolhouse and classes are expected to commencement successful August successful the aged Nova Scotia Community College buildings adjacent doorway until the caller operation is finished.

Dr. Jennifer Hall, elder subordinate dean of CBU's aesculapian campus, told CBC's Information Morning Cape Breton that caller fund cuts owed to a driblet successful enrolment by planetary students astatine CBU volition not impact the aesculapian program.

"The fund associated with the [medical] field is abstracted from the fund of CBU and of Dalhousie, truthful it's a precedence inaugural that has a dedicated fund successful itself," she said.

Some section physicians person expressed concerns astir their quality to instrumentality clip distant from signifier to teach.

But Hall said up to 45 doctors from the country person been recruited to thatch first-year students astatine the caller aesculapian schoolhouse and she is already recruiting much for the 2nd year.

"One of the cardinal things is the hiring of the squad and we person specified an energized radical of physicians and unit who are acceptable to conscionable the 30 caller students starting successful August," she said.

Hall has practised household medicine and was subordinate dean astatine the Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick field for 9 years.

She was president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada successful 2015-16 and is presently seat of the residency accreditation committee, which sets standards for household medicine residency programs accredited by the college.

Hall said teaching is not caller to section physicians.

"Medical acquisition has really happened successful Cape Breton since 1997, truthful this is conscionable a caller signifier … wherever determination is an accidental to instrumentality students from their archetypal aesculapian schoolhouse time and thatch them wholly successful Cape Breton," she said.

The students are expected to larn astir the section population's aesculapian needs, including those of Indigenous and African Nova Scotian descent, which CBU says would beryllium applicable successful agrarian settings passim the province.