The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
CBU eyes future medical school
University to cover tuition for five students at Dal
SYDNEY – Five future doctors will have their tuition at Dalhousie Medical School covered by Cape Breton University with the commitment to stay and practice in rural Nova Scotia after graduation.
The pilot initiative is aimed at addressing the doctor shortage in rural areas of the province, including the whole of Cape Breton Island, where 9,601 people – 7.2 percent of the population – are without a family doctor.
“Through this pilot program we will be creating five additional seats at Dalhousie University which otherwise would not exist,” said Gordon Macinnis, CBU’S vice-president of finance and operations.
BUILDING ON SUCCESS
Successful applicants will be required to meet three criteria: they must be from rural Nova Scotia or Mi’kmaw or Black communities, they must be interested in practising family medicine, and they must commit to a return of service agreement to practice in rural Nova Scotia for five years.
“At present, there are no other return of service agreements we are aware of in terms of domestic medical school applications (in Atlantic Canada) nor is there a focus upon asking students to choose family medicine as a condition of admission.
So, we are sort of testing the waters to see if there are applicants prepared to sign on under those criteria,” Macinnis said.
If the pilot is successful, Macinnis said there may be an expansion of the initiative, while the ultimate goal is for Cape Breton University to build on the success of its existing health-care programs to offer medical doctor training on the island.
“We have a very strong nursing program that has expanded two-fold in recent years and the vast majority of our graduates stay and work in Cape Breton, and we have the only public health program east of Montreal, so we’re looking at other ideas around health-care professions and what we may be able to do,” he said.
SHORTAGE OF PHYSICIANS
As of May 1, just under 92,000 people across the province were on the registry to find a family doctor, with 5,470 Nova Scotians joining the list in April.
In Cape Breton, the Sydney area has the highest rate of people looking for a doctor at 10.6 per cent, followed by the other former towns in the Industrial Cape Breton region. Rural areas have the lowest rate, with 2.6 per cent of people in Richmond, Victoria, and Inverness counties combined seeking a family doctor.
Pictou County has the worst doctor shortage in the province with more than a quarter of people in the New Glasgow/westville/stellarton area lacking a family doctor.
The majority of Nova Scotia residents seeking a family doctor are looking to replace a doctor, either because their family doctor has moved or closed their practice (28.4 percent), or their doctor has or is planning to retire (32.1 percent).
The provincial health authority lists 84 vacancies for family doctors in Nova Scotia including nine in Cape Breton.
INVESTMENTS IN HEALTHCARE
It will cost CBU $1.5 million to cover tuition for four years, an expense Macinnis said will come from the recent $5 million provincial investment toward the university’s strategic health initiative, which is aimed at recruiting, training, and retaining health-care providers in Cape Breton and other rural areas of the province.
“It will not impact the operating budget of the university,” Macinnis said, adding the provincial government has committed to covering the additional costs associated with the program.
“The province is interested in exploring new ideas around how we utilize the post-secondary system in Nova Scotia to support the needs of the general population and of course, we’re very game to explore such alternatives ourselves,” he said.
In March, along with the $5 million to CBU’S strategic health initiative, the Nova Scotia government also announced $65 million allocated for deferred infrastructure maintenance at CBU, Acadia University, Université Sainte-anne, and St. Francis Xavier University, and $35 million toward the construction of the proposed Centre for Discovery and Innovation at CBU.
Another $3.2 million went to add 200 new nursing seats in total between CBU, Dalhousie, St. F.X. and NSCC, with 28 going to CBU to make 161 spots in the nursing school. Eighty-five percent of graduates begin their careers in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality and another two per cent work in other parts of the island.
The partnership between Dalhousie University and Cape Breton will begin in September 2022 and the schools will collaborate to choose the five students from the medical program’s waitlist for the 2022-2023 academic year.