Meet Dr. Dominick Shelton: Our Q&A with the interim dean of recruitment and admissions at the TMU’s School of Medicine

Dr. Dominick Shelton wants to see a change in the field of medicine. As the interim dean of recruitment and admissions at the Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Medicine, the physician says he wants to see hospitals, doctors’ offices and physicians in general, better reflect the diversity of our population. Advocating for equity has been a major theme in Dr. Shelton’s career. The son of immigrants from Jamaica, he always had an affinity for life sciences, but never saw himself becoming a doctor.“There weren’t many Black physicians that I knew of at the time. I had no role model that looked like me,” Dr. Shelton told the Medical Post. But, he says, his family pushed him to take up medicine, and years later, Dr. Shelton’s career has brought him down the corridors of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where he is an academic emergency physician. There, he's focused on quality improvement and patient safety. He also co-founded both TAIBU, a community health centre in Scarborough, Ont., and the Black Physicians’ Association of Ontario, which was first established in 2007 to support the growth of Black health professionals and improve the health of Black communities in the province. At the association’s first gala, in June this year, Dr. Shelton was recognized for being the first Black physician in his latest role as interim dean of recruitment and admissions at TMU’s School of Medicine. Set to open in his hometown of Brampton, Ont., Dr. Shelton has spent the past several months working alongside a team to develop the school’s admission process. The Medical Post sat down with Dr. Shelton for a Q&A ahead of the school welcoming its first class of medical students in September 2025. You took on the role as interim assistant dean of admissions and recruitment at TMU in December. What have the past few months been like?It's been a whirlwind, and it's been a lot of work, because it's one thing to have this role of being the assistant-dean for admissions for a medical school, it's another thing to be in this position and to develop a new medical school. So to develop the admissions process is a lot of work. And in particular, we cannot open up the school until we're accredited, and so we're going through the process of applying for accreditation, and that has been a huge amount of work. You get energy from the challenge. It's something new. It's challenging, but the whole experience has been energizing.[Editor's note: TMU's medical school announced it earned its accreditation on Oct. 24]You can’t speak too much about the recruitment and admissions process for the new medical school, since it’s in the process of getting accredited, but tell me a bit about it’s mandate, and the medical students you hope to welcome in 2025. This is a medical school that is committed to a mission and vision of equity, diversity and inclusion, and so it's not just something that we're sort of adding on to our existing process as other medical schools would be. This is being built into the fabric of all that we do from the get go.It seems like a fitting position for you, given that you’ve always championed for the advancement of Black physicians in medicine. Tell me a bit about your background with the Black Physicians’ Association of Ontario.There was a precursor to the BPAO that I co-founded, the Association for the Advancement of Blacks in the Health Sciences and that was more inter-professional. It included not only physicians, but also other healthcare professionals, because we noticed there were very few Black physicians. Once we reached a critical mass, we were able to develop an organization specifically for Black physicians in the province. We identified that we needed to come together, not only as a social network, but also to advocate as an organization for the Black community and also to really mentor and educate. There’s still a huge way to go, but that was part of it. Is like reaching out to young people and letting them know that medicine was a career option.Now, out of curiosity, how have you seen the field change since those early days of the BPAO?It’s moving in the right direction. There definitely are more Black physicians practicing in Ontario. Over the last about six years, the University of Toronto implemented the Black student application program (BSAP), and gradually thereafter, other medical schools in the province and in the country have started up Black student applications programs for their medical school, which have helped the number (of Black medical students) increase significantly. I work at a teaching hospital, so I see who comes through the door, in terms of trainees, and over the years I saw the odd one or two Black residents. That’s changed over the past two, three years as the first of UofT medical students began graduating since the University implemented the BSAP about six years ago now. Since then, I see more Black residents and fellows on a regular basis. It just warms my heart to see young Black faces with the stethoscopes around their necks. We’re still underrepresented in the field of medicine, but like I said, it's going in the right direction. You have a long career in medicine, and have held various positions both in education and within hospital settings. You also co-founded the BPAO, have worked in improvement science, and began a community-health centre. Are there any challenges that you’ve seen in those positions that you hope the next generation you welcome at TMU will be able to sort of look at and and help solve? As Canadian society has become more diverse, I think that the newer generation of healthcare professionals, and in particular physicians, needs to reflect that. Not only in the faces you see in hospitals or clinical settings, but I think an understanding of diversity needs to be incorporated in medical training, so doctors are better equipped to serve a diverse population. And I recall when I went through my training, there was maybe one or two lectures on cultural competence, literally, one or two hours dedicated to it. So I think that for the newer generations of physicians, it needs to be incorporated into training and I think they need to be intentional about being aware of learning cultural competence, being aware of differences with other cultures and they need to learn how best to manage those situations.Is that something that will be incorporated at TMU? Not only in the diversity of future medical students, but also in their training?It’s a huge point that TMU will be addressing very intentionally. Our mission and vision with a focus on EDI will be reflected not only in our admissions process, but also in our curriculum. If we're going to target underrepresented groups, we also have to support them once they're in the program. And support takes on different forms, but an important part of that is mentoring, and as we start to have more Black physicians practicing then the existing physicians, have a responsibility to take on the role as mentors for the young people coming up. Sure, our mere existence in medicine acts as a form of a role model, but I think it's also important to go the next step and to form relationships with Black medical students and provide them the necessary support. It's a rigorous academic program and and I think that we need to realize that we all need supports to go through difficult processes, and this is no exception.

Meet Dr. Dominick Shelton: Our Q&A with the interim dean of recruitment and admissions at the TMU’s School of Medicine

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