Welcoming attitude helps retain doctors: health authority director

Pictou County has everything it needs in infrastructure to attract doctors, said Dr. Nicole Boutilier, Northern Zone medical executive director for the Nova Scotia Health Authority.

The area’s doctor shortage was brought up several times during a two-hour meeting with the Municipality of the County of Pictou with one councillor asking what can be done to attract more physicians.

“Be a welcoming community,” said Boutilier. “Everyone leads busy lives in the current world, even in the medical staff, but embrace people and make it part of your daily life.”

She said some physicians move to the area with spouses who don’t know anyone and become isolated and lonely.

Sometimes that transition is easier for physicians moving here, she said, if they have children, because when the children get to school they make friends and the parents are involved in that aspect of their lives.

“Be a good neighbour. Have them over for supper,” she said. “I can’t stress how important it is.”

She said the county offers good educational opportunities for children as well as recreational and cultural activities that families look for when they are moving to new places.

“There is nothing here that kids can’t do that isn’t being offered in larger cities, but they need to make connections that make them want to stay here for the long term.”

The Nova Scotia Health Authority says there are four vacancies for family physicians in Pictou County at the moment and 1,600 people without a family doctor.

Some county councillors were skeptical of that number because of the complaints they heard during the municipal election.

“There are 29 family physicians in Pictou County and we are trying to recruit more,” she said. “We are always trying to recruit. I can’t remember a time when we weren’t.”

She said there have been unexpected changes that caused some people to be without a family doctor, but there is also a societal shift.

“Fifty per cent of the people attending medical schools now are women and their work patterns are different than men,” Boutilier said, adding that different generations work differently as well.