GETTING MED STUDENTS TO BECOME FAMILY DOCTORS

SOLUTION: GETTING THEM TO TRAIN IN RURAL COMMUNITIES

Last spring, Dalhousie’s School of Medicine saw only 25 per cent of its graduates chose to family medicine.

The results were surprising for staff at the medical school. This was the lowest level of students to go on to family medicine since before 2004, and is a precipitous drop from 2014, when 49 per cent of graduates chose family medicine.

In an e-mail to SaltWire Network, a representative of the faculty of medicine said the university has established a task force to investigate why students are increasingly choosing other specialties.

“We immediately began investigating the factors that led to these results and put resources into a Family Medicine Project Charter whose course is to examine these influencers more deeply,” said Jennifer Lewandowski, a communications advisor for the department.

Lewandowski said the school hopes to encourage 50 per cent of graduating students to pursue family medicine by 2022.

According to data from the Canadian Resident Matching Service, between 2014 and 2018, the percentage of Dalhousie residents who listed family medicine as their first choice dropped from 41.7 per cent in 2014 to 20.4 per cent in 2018.

Conversely, the Memorial University Faculty of Medicine has largely maintained its rate of student graduates who choose family medicine. The school saw 41 per cent of graduates match to family medicine in 2018. In 2014, 42 per cent chose family medicine.

Dr. Kathy Stringer, MUN’s chair of family medicine, said they place a strong emphasis on encouraging students to practise in rural communities. The school attempts to recruit students from rural areas in hopes they will go back and practice in their home region.

“Right from first year … our medical students have exposure to family physicians in their offices,” Stringer said.

In the third year, students spend eight weeks in a rural community as part of a core family medicine rotation.

Stringer said there is strong evidence that students who receive their training in rural regions tend to practise in these communities after graduating.

But she added work needs to be done at the high school level to encourage teenagers from rural communities to consider a career in healthcare.

“It has to be an approach that starts way before we get them,” Stringer said.