Health authority under fire over doctor recruitment in Cape Breton
The Nova Scotia Health Authority is under fire over family doctor recruitment in Cape Breton.
Keith Bain, the Progressive Conservative MLA for Victoria-The Lakes, said last October several Dalhousie medical students showed interest in visiting the region to learn about family medicine.
An event was suggested for the end of April, but Bain said it was cancelled recently after the health authority failed to notify local doctors and took too long getting back to the students.
"We know that there is a health-care crisis," Bain said. "We have emergency rooms closed all the time. There are people without family doctors. Here's an opportunity, and the health authority, in my opinion, blew it again."
Bain said it's the second time the health authority has fumbled the recruitment file. Last year, the authority was heavily criticized for not sending recruiters to an event in St. John's.
Bain called on the health minister and the premier to apologize to the students and to Cape Bretoners.
Dr. Stephanie Langley, a family doctor in Sydney who is also involved in recruitment, said local doctors weren't given enough notice of the event by the health authority.
"I was apprised of it just the first week in April and they were planning to come the last week in April, which was just not enough time to be able to get something together for them," she said.
Doctors volunteer their time for a weekend with the medical students, teaching them basic skills and going on social outings.
The students are in their first and second years of study and do not have a licence to practice, so they wouldn't be able to help keep ERs open or relieve overworked family doctors, said Langley.
But the visits are an important part of the long-term recruitment process, because it helps convince some of them to come back in their third and fourth years, she said, and some even come back as medical residents after graduation.
"It's an unfortunate issue and I think, you know, it speaks to some of the disorganization maybe that's going on within the health authority locally," said Langley.
The students, some of whom are from Cape Breton, are still interested in the region, she said, and another event is being planned for the fall.
The health authority said in an email that Nova Scotia medical students are a key priority for physician recruitment. It said organizing for the Cape Breton event was delayed due to the hiring of a new recruiter.
The authority said it has apologized to local doctors and has agreed to reschedule the visit.
Kevin Chapman, director of partnerships with Doctors Nova Scotia, said the provincial physicians' group was involved in a similar recruiting event earlier this year in Liverpool, N.S., and he said it went extremely well.
The event was put on by a local doctors, a local charitable foundation, the chamber of commerce and the health authority.
It was such a hit, other communities are looking to replicate the effort.
"It's a good-news-bad-news thing," Chapman said. "It's good news, because everybody wants to do it, but the bad news is we don't have the infrastructure."
There is no formal arrangement between Doctors Nova Scotia, the health authority and local community groups to put on recruiting events, Chapman said.
But that would smooth out the process and help improve recruiting efforts across the province, he said.
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