More Sask. medical grads staying in province

The diagnosis for Saskatchewan’s doctor shortage is improving, but the province isn’t in the clear yet.

Saskatchewan is keeping more of its medical graduates and attracting an increasing number of international doctors. However, the province still needs at least 90 more family physicians and specialists.

“We’re certainly not at 100 per cent where we need to be — that’s pretty obvious,” said James Winkel, spokesman with Saskdocs (also known as the Physician Recruitment Agency of Saskatchewan).

But when comparing Saskatchewan with other western provinces, he said: “I think we’re doing pretty well. They have the same issues we do. A need for specialists, a continued need for family physicians, but not to the same extent we had four or five years ago. It’s getting a lot better and stabilized to a degree.”

There has been measurable progress in retaining Saskatchewan-educated doctors.

Since completing a postgraduate program, 40 University of Saskatchewan family medicine graduates began practising in the province as of July 1.

Overall, the retention rate of local family medicine graduates has jumped over the past three years — from 58 per cent to 75 per cent.

A number of factors account for the growing number of homegrown doctors staying in the province, Winkel said.

A lot has to do with the co-ordinated efforts of Saskdocs and its partners, the College of Medicine, the Saskatchewan Medical Association and employers — such as the regional health authorities and Northern Medical Services — attending local career fairs, he said.

The collaboration makes for onestop shopping for students or medical residents so they don’t have to travel from community to community or region to region to find jobs in which they’re interested.

Training more family medical residents outside of Regina and Saskatoon, doubling the number of postgraduate physician training seats at the College of Medicine to 120 and expanding the number of undergraduate medical education seats from 60 to 100 has also aided retention efforts.

“It’s fair to say that if you complete your residency in a province, the likelihood of you staying in that province or community is very high,” Winkel said.

In addition, 10 new international medical graduates (IMGs) are practising in the province as a result of the Saskatchewan International Physician Practice Assessment (SIPPA) program.

The unique made-in Saskatchewan program assesses the education and clinical ability of IMGs before allowing them to practise medicine.

Winkel noted Saskdocs has supported health regions, Northern Medical Services and other employers in recruiting 600 physicians to Saskatchewan since 2011.

The Rural Family Physician Incentive Program has helped attract doctors to smaller centres by providing recent graduates with up to $120,000 over five years if they set up practice in a community with fewer than 10,000 people.

“Since it was launched in March 2013, 66 individual grants were awarded totalling just over $1 million,” Winkel said.

To give rural doctors a breather, a locum pool has been set up to provide them with additional physician coverage and assistance.

Rural physicians who take on a broad scope of practice, which includes areas such as obstetrics, gynecology and geriatrics, receive a 10.5-per-cent premium on their earnings.

However, working in rural and remote communities is not for everyone, Winkel said.

The lack of amenities found in larger cities and the isolation of the north has posed problems for physicians and their families in the past.

“Sometimes a physician would come in and start practising, but it just wasn’t working — either because the family wasn’t comfortable there or the physician wasn’t,” he said. “It’s really about finding the right fit for the right community.”

According to the latest job postings on Saskdocs’ website, 45 family doctors are needed in Saskatchewan — six in Regina, nine in Saskatoon and the remainder in rural and remote areas of the province.

Of the 45 specialists postings, 14 positions are required in Saskatoon and 16 in Regina.

Recruiters have just returned from the Irish Medical Careers Fair in Dublin and the British Medical Journal Careers Fair in London — international events Saskdocs have been going to for the past three years.

“It is really one trip with two career fairs jammed into a week ... The SIPPA numbers that you see us put out pretty regularly are due to the work we do in Canada and abroad,” Winkel said.