ST. PAUL – St. Paul’s Health Professions Attraction and Retention Committee (ARC) continues its efforts to attract and retain healthcare workers to the region, including nurses and physicians. ARC consists of Town and the County of St. Paul representatives, as well as administration from the St. Therese Hospital.
St. Paul’s current focus is attracting health support staff and other health professionals like nurses, according to Town of St. Paul Mayor Maureen Miller. Among the efforts of attracting nurses to St. Paul is an initiative with the nursing department of Faculté Saint-Jean of the University of Alberta, which is being done through Rural Health Professions Action Plan (RhPAH).
According to Miller, there will be student nurses from Faculté Saint-Jean coming into the community sometime October for hands-on learning, in addition to a social event to interact and experience what it’s like to live in a small community.
“We're really hoping to get ourselves within that program so that we're one of their designations that they would actually come out and do their practicums within our community,” said Miller, explaining that doing so would provide an opportunity to attract nurses to St. Paul. According to Miller, many Francophone nurses do “Francophone education” but end up working in non-Francophone hospitals, “So, we felt it was a very good match to our community to actually piggyback with the Francophone nursing program.”
Despite the focus shift from doctors to nurses, Miller said attracting physicians to St. Paul is still important. The town previously suffered a loss of four physicians within a few months in 2021, requiring ARC to focus on the recruitment for physicians to alleviate challenges within the emergency room.
Among the identified challenges include a lack of obstetrical services, mental health, and general family medicine. Miller said identifying these challenges, rather than “just finding one peg in a hole,” helped St. Paul attract a total of seven new physicians within a year.
“We were able to just open up the box completely and redefine the needs, and then advertise for all of those needs,” said Miller, explaining the seven new doctors in St. Paul were able to fit themselves into particular areas of practice.
And while some of the needs for obstetrics have been met, there are still service disruptions in the department due to a lack of support staff.
“We have seven doctors - quite happy to have them all,” said the mayor. “They’re coming from multiple parts of the world and have done education within Canada in some way, shape, or form – multiple parts of their education were done here, but they’ve come with such a diverse exposure to life.”
ARC is also looking for volunteers in the community to assist health professionals get settled within the community, according to Miller. She said social connections are important to attraction and retention of healthcare professionals.
Data suggests a continued shortage of physicians in the province while demand for physicians continues to rise. Data from the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA) indicates the number of new physicians in Alberta has declined over the previous five years.
Background in Alberta’s physician workforce
In 2017, new physicians numbered at 686 as opposed to a decrease of 356 physicians, before seeing a steady decrease over the following four years.
In 2021, there were 613 new physicians compared to a decrease of 568 physicians, leaving a net increase of 45 new physicians. When compared to 2017, Alberta had a net increase of 328 new physicians.
Retiring physicians remain the biggest contributor, increasing to 176 retired physicians for 2020-21, compared to 104 in 2019. However, physicians who left the province and what is termed as “voluntary erasure” saw the biggest changes, last year. In 2021, 140 physicians left Alberta as opposed to 75 physicians who left in 2017.
“Voluntary erasure” includes physicians who voluntarily end their practice permit in the province without providing a reason why. CPSA says physicians who end their practice permit for reasons that include leaving the province or retirement, without telling the CPSA the reason, will fall under the “voluntary erasure” category.
In 2021, 158 physicians voluntarily ended their practice permits, compared to 79 in 2017.
The other contributing factors are physicians removed from the Register and those who passed away, both without big changes between 2017-2021.
Find a Doctor
There are 40 Primary Care Network (PCN) in the province, representing over 3,800 doctors and 1,000 health care providers who serve around 3.6 million Albertans. The PCNs collaborated to use a single website, Alberta Find a Doctor, to make it easier for Albertans to find family doctors who are accepting patients in their area.
Alberta Find a Doctor comprises five zones, including the North Zone. The North Zone has 11 PCNs, including those in the Lakeland region.
According to data from the PCNs, between April 2021 – March 2022 visits to the website increased by 716,163 (108 per cent increase) compared to the previous year, including 10,949 visits (69 per cent increase) from the North Zone. The number of users also increased from 219,514 users to 490,764 users (124 per cent increase).
In comparison, the number of Alberta physicians taking patients decreased from 731 to 427 (42 per cent decrease). In the North Zone, 65 family doctors are taking new patients as of May 5.
PCN Lakeland, based out of the St. Paul area, shows 11 family doctors accepting new patients as of Aug. 24. Bonnyville PCN shows over 20 doctors, with most doctors not accepting new patients as of Aug. 24.
The latest numbers for doctors accepting new patients, including Lakeland PCN and Bonnyville PCN can be found at: albertafindadoctor.ca/pcn/north-zone
