PRINCE.EDWARD.ISLAND (CBC) - P.E.I. has hired an administrator to get its Family Medicine Residency Program, due for launch in July 2009, underway.

The residency program is the fulfilment of a promise by the Liberal government elected last May, and was announced last year. It is intended to help the province attract more physicians.

Lynn Sutherland, the new administrator, will be working with the doctors doing the teaching and the students.

"If [students] are looking for three months in family medicine, she'll find them a spot in a family medicine office for those three months. Or if they're doing emerg for a couple of months, she'll find one of the emerg departments on the Island that will take the student," Dr. Richard Wedge, the province's director of medical programs, told CBC News on Wednesday.

Expanding current ad hoc program

There currently 29 family doctors and specialists willing to teach residents, and Wedge said the province hopes to increase that number by the time the full two-year program is launched.

"We have a program already underway that we've been doing for the last several years that's more of an ad hoc program, so Lynn is going to be coming in to expand that undergraduate program as well, and then get ready for the big program," said Wedge.

The program will begin with five residents taking the two-year program, with five new residents starting the program every summer.

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