Rural vital signs

The number of doctors in your community can directly impact your quality of life.

The waiting lines here in the city can be long at times, but it's better then having only a few physicians for an entire community, as is the situation in many rural parts of the province.

This creates a desperate situation when one or more of those doctors decides to leave or go on vacation.

The Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons says there are around
7,700 practicing doctors in our province.  4,000 to 5,000 work in Calgary and Edmonton,  the rest of the physicians work in regional situations, while only a few work in the small communities.  "If you go north of Edmonton it gets pretty thin," says College of Physicians and Surgeons Registrar Dr. Trevor Theman.

Alberta Medical Association Section President of Rural Medicine, Dr. Allan Garbutt, says at first glance the number of rural doctors is very misleading.

"There are approximately 450 doctors, who are regarded as being rural, however, a good percentage of those are actually more like suburban, such as Strathmore and Leduc," said Dr. Garbutt.

Dr. Theman says the problem with the shortage starts with the number of family doctors being trained in the country.

"Canadian medical students, about 70 per cent of them, choose to do traditional specialty practice and only 30 to 32 per cent choose to be family doctors," said Dr. Theman.

Dr. Theman also believes all levels of government need to draw up a new plan on what rural health-care should look like to improve the situation.  "Having more regionalized services, more physicians in a location with a wider range of services, rather than physicians scattered, should be considered," said Dr. Theman.

Dr. Theman says doctor's often voice concern about going to rural areas where there is only a few physicians, because they don't want to be on-call all the time.

Dr. Garbutt says it seems like every time they start to make progress on increasing their numbers, they slide back again.  He says in the 20 years he has been in medicine they have always been in a deficit in terms of rural physicians.

Garbutt believes the number of rural family doctors would increase if there wasn't a bias towards specialty practices in medical schools.  "We can push from the rural as hard as we want, we're not going to change the universities.  We need to have a process where the unspoken bias in the universities towards specialty medicine are negated, I guess and indeed where being a family doctor never has the word 'just' in front of it.  I would like to see it where they say you're a family doctor not 'just' a surgeon," said Dr. Garbutt.

He says medical students need to have more exposure to both rural and urban family doctors while training.

University of Calgary medical student Sarah Lalonde, who is currently doing her Rural Integrated Clerkship says she is aware of the situation she is about to enter.

Lalonde says her current rural clerkship is showing her first hand the effect the shortage is having on doctors in High River.  "For example we have three anesthetists in town and we have a low-risk obstetrics program, so one of these three anesthetists have to be on call 24-hours a day, seven days a week," said Lalonde.

However, Lalonde is looking forward to having a big-scope of practise and the many skills that come with being in a rural community.

While there are shortages in many parts of the province, there are some success stories, including the situation the community of Olds finds themselves in these days, but only because they took matters into their own hands.

The central Alberta town went from 7 doctors in 2006 to 14 today.

Physician Recruitment Chair Mel Giles tells 660News in 2006 a group of 12 people decided action needed to be taken to address the concerns of their doctors.

They had their doctors fill out a confidential survey on their clinics and the community.

"The important areas for concern were over-work trying to keep the emergency at the hospital going 24-7 and trying to manage their own practice," said Giles
 
Giles says they also turned to Alberta Health Services and its Rural Physician Action Plan for help.   

"We asked them to please keep introducing us to new prospective physicians as many as possible so we could tour them around our community," said Giles.

Giles says they are also working to make sure Olds is on the minds of University of Calgary medical students, by bringing them out to the community.  

Giles says recruiting goes far beyond health care.  "You're not hiring a physician to work in your clinic, you're hiring a family to come live in your community," emphasizes Giles.

He says it's important to find out about a bit about the physician prior to their tour to your community.  "By asking the doctor's in advance we find out a lot of recreational needs, housing requirements, education requirements," said Giles.  

Giles says doctors have responded positively to the changes they have made since 2006 and as a result they have seen a big change in the number of physicians in the community.