A prescription for optimism

Dr. Dominik Nowak. Photo by Nick Iwanyshyn.

The current president of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) was days away from starting his life sciences degree at the University of Toronto Mississauga in 2009 when he had a change of heart.

“I was looking through the course catalogue and thought there’s going to be time,” says Dominik Nowak (BSc 2013, MHSc 2020).

He immediately de-registered from his life sciences classes in favour of “an open slate” of first-year courses in environment, global politics and philosophy.

“It was such a beautifully eye-opening first-year,” Nowak remembers. The lessons learned from UTM arts and science faculty, including the late philosophy professor Jacqueline Brunning, helped to shape the physician and healthcare leader Nowak would become. A family doctor practicing at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, he was chosen as the top advocate for the province’s 43,000 doctors in May. The 32-year-old is the youngest serving president in the OMA’s 143-year history.

Nowak credits Brunning’s optimistic spirit with helping to inform his OMA platform grounded in realism and hope – “the reality that we have a healthcare system in crisis” layered with a deep sense of hope in advocating for a future that he calls “more kind, caring and careful.”

In addition to his UTM degree in biology and philosophy of science, Nowak brings to his leadership role a Master of Health Administration degree from U of T’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. He completed his graduate program while launching his family practice and teaching in the Mississauga Academy of Medicine at UTM.

“There were definitely some déjà vu moments,” he says of his return to UTM as an assistant professor just six years after completing his undergraduate degree. “I realize now it gave me a deeper understanding of where my students were coming from and what their experiences were like.

“My closeness to it gave me a valuable perspective.”

It’s a perspective Nowak hopes to keep in sight as he advocates for tangible solutions to Ontario’s family doctor shortage that has left 2.3 million people without access to primary care and emergency departments under unprecedented strain.

“We need to ask ourselves how we are nurturing those who are starting off their healthcare journey,” he says.

His prescription is more of what he received during his first year at UTM.

“Optimism – impatient, relentless, ambitious optimism – that’s how we need to tackle rebuilding a health system we can one day be proud of again.”

Originally published by University of Toronto Mississauga