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Hard search to replace only doctor in remote B.C. town ends in Antarctica

The last remaining doctor in Milk River, Alta., has decided to not retire until the town can find a replacement.

Canada's been fighting a rural doctor shortage for years but nothing demonstrates it better than the way a remote northwestern B.C. community went literally to the ends of the earth to recruit a new physician.

According to Postmedia News, the village of Tatla Lake has poached a doctor who was working in Antarctica.

The ranching community about 500 kilometres northwest of Kamloops, B.C., had one doctor who was planning to retire.

Dr. Michal Smialowski spent a year looking for someone to take over his practice. He got no interest from anyone — except Dr. Rob Coetzee, who works at the South African National Antarctic Expedition base.

In an job interview with Smialowski conducted via email, Coetzee said he'd be honoured to work out of the doctor's trailer office, Postmedia said.

"I’ve always been drawn to remote settings," Coetzee wrote. "I enjoy working by myself, and I think the position . . . will fit me like a glove — remote, rural, need for emergency medicine skills, breathtaking scenery, etc."

[ Related: Doctor shortage plagues rural Alberta ]

According to Postmedia, Coetzee described his duties at South Africa's Antarctic base this way:

"I’m the doctor, dentist, surgeon, psychologist, psychiatrist, nutritionist, etc. for the over-wintering team consisting of nine people," he wrote. "We were originally 10 [including two scientists, one electrical engineer, one mechanical engineer, one electronic engineer, two diesel mechanics and me], but I sent the space weather scientist home for surgery in January when she tore the ligaments in her knee after a slip and fall on the ice."

Coetzee said he became a doctor in 2006 after a career as a globe-trotting paramedic in the Middle East and Africa. He also had a stint as a cruise-ship doctor.

Smialowski told Postmedia he had been advertising the Tatla Lake opening for months. He's set to retire at the end of this year, before Coetzee completes his tour in Antarctica in February, which will leave the community without a doctor for three or four months.

Meanwhile, Coetzee has to go through the bureaucratic pipeline to qualify to practise in Canada.

"There’s still a long road ahead with much paperwork and red tape, and these challenges are made all the more overwhelming due to the fact that I will have to do all of it by email from Antarctica," he noted.

When he arrives, Coetzee will have about 1,500 patients and his emergency-medicine skills will be tested regularly to deal with injuries ranging from car and ATV accidents to gunshot wounds and heart attacks, Postmedia said.

[ Related: South Shore doctor shortage a crisis, say patients ]

It's estimated four million Canadians don't have a family doctor, many of them in rural areas. Physicians have been reluctant to move to smaller communities, despite incentives such a cash bonuses or paid living expenses. They're often on call 24/7 and don't have easy access to the kinds of support and technology found in big-city hospitals.

The National Post noted recently that not even Galiano Island, an idyllic spot between the B.C. mainland and Vancouver Island, has had trouble recruiting a general practitioner to serve its 1,200 residents.

Rural hospitals are also struggling to keep physicians, according to the Review in Port Hawksbury, Ont., where the only way to keep the local hospital fully staffed is through overtime.

But interest in rural practices is increasing, the University of British Columbia medical school's spokesman Daniel Pressman told Postmedia. The number has risen to 2,300 in the last decade, up about 30 per cent.

As Dr. Giang Duong, Port Hawksbury's news GP, told the Review, rural doctoring is a challenge but can be more rewarding in small towns.

"You are helping people you know," he said.