The atmosphere in the R.H. Channing Auditorium on the evening of Friday, April 13 was one of frustration, concern and, perhaps most importantly, determination.
As one by one, residents of Flin Flon, Creighton, Denare Beach, Snow Lake and the surrounding area stepped up to the microphone during an NDP-led meeting on local health care, stories of weeks-long wait times for doctor appointments and test results, the frustrations of doctor turnover, and days missed due to medical travel filled the air.
Notably, much of the crowd was middle-aged or older. A significant chunk of those in attendance are facing the challenges of health care in the north in real time. But almost everyone will have to access health care at some point – this isn’t an issue for just one demographic.
As laypeople, it’s hard to tell someone in the medical profession – be it a physician, administrators of the local health authority, or the government body directing how health care is administered in the province – how to do their job. But as laypeople, we know when what’s in place isn’t working. And what’s in place isn’t working.
Northern Manitoba isn’t the only place that faces the issue of doctor shortages and doctor retention issues. Communities just slightly larger than Flin Flon have tackled this issue head on at a local level and succeeded.
In 2003, the two family doctors that served the Municipality of Clare, Nova Scotia threatened to quit due to being overworked. Clare has a population of just over 8,000 people, and doctor recruitment had been a challenge for decades. Doctors would come, but, in a move familiar to most Flin Flonners, leave soon after. At the time, the municipality’s council began to focus its efforts locally, forming strong relationships with young people from the community who were accepted to medical school, essentially wooing them over the course of their studies in the hopes they would return to stay.
The municipality’s efforts have paid off – today the health centre in that region has six family doctors with ties to the community, along with a nurse practitioner.
Goderich, Ontario, faced a similar doctor shortage in the early 2000s, with only five doctors to serve the rural community’s 8,000 people. The health authority for the region hired a physician recruiter who focused not just on recruiting doctors, but on retaining them through such means as finding jobs for physicians’ spouses and arranging daycare for children. Goderich town council sold doctor recruitment as a community effort, and community organizations raised money to upgrade infrastructure, making the area more appealing for incoming physicians. These efforts, too, paid off – Goderich now hosts whopping 18 family doctors in the community.
These success stories exist across the country. It’s nothing new to hear that Flin Flon has a doctor recruitment problem, but there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when we look at how to attract physicians – there are other communities who have faced doctor shortages and come out on top on a local level. Stakeholders in the area should be looking to those communities as an example and a resource.
MLA Tom Lindsey has said he will spearhead a community group that will focus on doctor recruitment and retention, much like the newly formed task force in Snow Lake has been doing. If local leaders and stakeholder groups can take responsibility, get behind this cause and get the community to rally behind it, there is no reason Flin Flon can’t see the same success other rural communities have.
