NIPIGON — When Dr. Andrea Zapcic began her two-year residency at the District Memorial Hospital, it was a new experience in a familiar old space.
The recent NOSM University doctor grew up in nearby Red Rock, so Nipigon is essentially her hometown. That made its hospital the obvious choice for residency, she told Newswatch in a recent interview.
“When you apply to residency you can apply to as many or as few programs as you want, and I actually only applied to Nipigon for residency,” she said.
“That’s where I really wanted to go. And basically you interview and then you pick where you want to go and the program that interviews you also picks if they want you, so that’s why it’s called a match. And I was happy to be matched with Nipigon.
“I picked it because I want to work there and I felt like being able to train in the place where I want to work in the future was more valuable to me than going somewhere else.
“And I just really love my hometown, and I’m so thankful to have the opportunity to be back in Nipigon training with people I know and patients that I’m familiar with.”
Zapcic said patients often know her, or at least recognize her as a local. And that’s been true right from the start of her residency.
“Going into my first day as a doctor in Nipigon — this was back in July — I had, like, a little bit of nerves as anyone would with the first day of a new job and new responsibilities.
“But I walked into my first patient’s room and she gave me the biggest hug, you know — ‘Oh, so proud of you, sweetie.’
“She knew me from when I was a little girl. And I’ve gotten lots of that, and it’s very sweet. That’s great. It makes going to work so nice.”
Nipigon Mayor Suzanne Kukko said the new doctor’s presence is greatly appreciated in town.
“I think I can speak for all of our community when I say we're thrilled to have Andrea, Dr. Zapcic, on board with our hospital,” she said.
“I’m also thrilled that we have a full complement of doctors in Nipigon,” Kukko added.
The mayor said she mentioned Nipigon’s successful doctor recruitment to health ministry officials at the recent provincial municipalities conference “to tip my hat to them for assisting in funding NOSM, but also to make sure that our hospital’s CEO and team get kudos.”
Zapcic said NOSM University, called the Northern Ontario School of Medicine until 2021, was not only her first choice but her only choice for med school.
She studied at the school’s Lakehead campus in the “rural generalist pathway,” which is designed to produce physicians who deliver a broad range of medical care that meets the diverse needs in small towns.
As Zapcic sees it, being a doctor is “a way I can make a difference in people’s lives, whether it’s through family clinic – you know, building relationships with both patients and their entire families – or working more acutely in the emergency department, where you have the ability to make like a life-changing impact in the moment.”
