Community health increasing continued from page 82
For example, in Medicine Hat a total of 33 physicians were recruited to Medicine Hat, with 19 commencing practice in 2014 and a further 14 to arrive this year. Thirteen of those physicians are family practitioners.
In Brooks, there are currently 22 doctors, with both Maclean and Brooks Mayor Martin Shields saying they’re no longer actively recruiting doctors,
In Oyen, a new family doctor is expected to arrive in the spring. Redcliff recently added a family doctor, and recruitment is ongoing in Bow Island.
“I would say the difference, from the perspective of where we were five years ago and now, the coordination of those three areas,” said Maclean. “We are much better coordinated, we’re better at working together and being really focused at trying to be more proactive. We’ve been digging ourselves out of significant holes and crises over the last four years.”
Maclean says AHS is also keeping in contact with communities to ensure the needs for physicians are continuing to be met.
Here is a closer look at several communities and the recruitment programs.
Brook Brooks
Brooks Mayor Martin Shields said when they were recruiting doctors, it was not necessarily a number they were looking at, but filling a couple of holes in their care.
“We had a shortage of female doctors and a shortage of doctors who could do obstetrics,” Shields said in a phone interview. “There was an issue in the community where for about 18 months, we were not, other than emergencies, delivering babies routinely. Routine obstetrics was moved to Medicine Hat, Lethbridge or Calgary.”
Shields, along with councillors from both the city and the County of Newell, began meeting with doctors in the community to begin the recruiting process.
“One of the things doctors do well is recruit themselves, through their connections, their friends, their colleagues and where they’ve been, they do a good job of getting people to the community to take a look,” he said.
Dr. Roisin Dempsey, a family doctor at the Newell Clinic, was one of the most recent doctors do be recruited to Brooks, arriving in May 2014. Originally from Ireland, Dempsey practiced as a medical student in Brooks in 2005 and decided to come back when she was qualified.
“The community is fantastic, welcoming, hard working and genuine,” she wrote in an e-mail. “It is very multicultural here, which makes it easier to be an immigrant to Brooks.”
Shields said the committee worked to put together information about the community to send prior to the doctors’ arrival and determine the needs which needed to be met when the doctor arrived.
Shields says the doctors have been responded positively to the community, and the committee keeps in contact with the doctors to ensure they want to stay in the community.
Dempsey, who is now taking a position in Calgary in June once her husband moves to the region, said the community was very helpful for a person moving to Canada for the first time.
With a total of 22 doctors in the region, Shields says the town and AHS are not actively recruiting doctors at the moment.
Oyen
According to AHS, the goal for Oyen was to have three family practitioners in the region for the Oyen Medical Clinic, and the town has reached its goal.
Dr. Petra Muller has been practicing as a doctor since 2008 and Dr. Roxy Conde has committed to a three year contract. Dr. Akin Osakuade is expected to be arriving this year from the United Kingdom, and has committed to a three-year contract.
“As with any rural place, it’s always kind of a struggle to get your full physician quota,” said Christie Dick, with the Special Area, M.D. of Acadia (SAMDA)
Dick says SAMDA, AHS and members of the community all are key parts to helping recruit doctors to the region. They created a website (
http://www.physiciancareersinoyen.com) to assist in marketing the region to doctors, and work to ensure the doctors feel welcome in the community.
“We’ve gone to great lengths to thank them and involve them in things,” said Dick. “From everything we hear, they’re really happy.”
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Bow Island
Maclean says Bow Island will be a focus for physician recruitment in 2015. She says by 2016, the town will need two new physicians. At present, two doctors have been in town for more than 30 years and one is leaving at the end of March. AHS is hoping to secure the first one by the middle of the year.
Mayor Gordon Reynolds, in an e-mail to the Medicine Hat News in February, says recruiting is ongoing at present through AHS and the two remaining doctors.
41226221•03/31/15
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