A new doctor says the province is still not responding quickly enough to doctors who want to work here, despite a growing number of people on the waiting list for primary care.
Dr Andrew McLean, a medical resident and health policy analyst in Fredericton, said he had seen no evidence that the province had stepped up its recruitment game over the past few years.
“Are we calling new family doctors on the phone and saying, ‘Do you want to work here?'” He told Information Morning Moncton.
– There is no urgency.
Last week, the province announced a drastic increase in the number of people on the waiting list. The number of people on the waiting list for a primary care provider has risen from 40,000 to 63,000 since last fall.
Dr Andrew McLean says he sees no urgency on the part of the province to step up the recruitment of doctors. (Submitted by Andrew McLean)
Members of a working group working on a new health plan attributed the increase to more doctors retiring and more people moving to New Brunswick.
According to Michel Guenard, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, there are 181 vacancies in New Brunswick as of May. The vacancies for general practitioners and emergency rooms represent 82 of this number, and the rest are vacancies for specialists.
The number of vacancies is drastically higher for registered nurses, according to data shared by Guenard.
There are 783 registered vacancies for nurses in the entire province as of April 1st. Horizon’s health network has 559 and Vitalité Health Network has 224 vacancies.
“Dissociated” efforts
Recruiting health workers is not a new issue. Last spring, Health Minister Dorothy Shepard called the province’s recruitment strategy “unbound” and said new graduates and potential employees were not turning in time.
McLean has been saying this for a long time. He said he knew graduates who had contacted the province to find out how to get started here and had not received a response.
A few years ago, McLean said Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were in a similar situation with a shortage of doctors, but Nova Scotia’s strategy of aggressively seeking local, national and international employees paid off, even though it is one of the lowest paid provinces.
“Their tenants these days are more stubborn than a mosquito trying to get through a screen door, as they are everywhere,” he said.
Last year, Nova Scotia set up a recruitment service dedicated solely to hiring new doctors.
Last week, the province announced that more than 160 doctors had been hired and started working across the province since the cabinet was set up. This is higher than the last three years, when the number of new recruits was around 128.
“They have a team of 12 people working full time on this and they are looking for more. And these are people with experience in tourism, marketing and business,” McLean said.
Information Morning – Moncton 11:55 New medical thoughts on the recruitment effort in New Brunswick.
Andrew McLean is a permanent physician and health policy analyst in Fredericton.
Part of the problem is that it is not clear who exactly is responsible for recruiting, he said.
Guenard said the province has incentives for rural rural areas, family doctors, specialists and doctors in the emergency department. She said she has an incentive budget of $ 5 million.
“The size of the incentive varies depending on the specialty and location, ranging from $ 20,000 to $ 100,000,” she said.
It is unclear whether New Brunswick has its own recruitment staff. On Monday, Guenard said there would be a recruitment seminar this week that would include people from across the medical field who would draw up a plan.
However, there are doctors recruiting within the Horizon Health Network, spokesman Chris McDavid said in an email.
“They usually work behind the scenes, but they will report to our vice president of medicine and our chief of staff,” McDavid said.
McLean said it didn’t matter who recruited, as long as someone did.
“I think most of the New Brunswickers would say they just don’t care who takes the lead, but it has to be someone.”
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