The Manitoba government will fund a plan to attract more rural students to medical school, give them more training in rural hospitals and provide extra training for rural doctors in the field.
It’s one of the most comprehensive efforts in Canada to date to fill the doctor shortage in rural areas.
Manitoba’s plan drew praise from the vice-president of the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada.
Dale Dewar, a doctor from Wynyard, Sask., said the plan follows almost every recommendation of the World Organization of Family Doctors on training rural doctors.
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“This plan looks pretty proactive.”
She said policies like this one have been a long time coming.
Dewar added she likes the plan because it integrates strategies from recruitment to training to continuing education.
Manitoba’s plan differs from other provinces’ efforts in that it doesn’t offer financial incentives in exchange for service in rural areas.
“We’re not coercing people,” said Gary Beazley, one of the plan’s architects and a longtime member of the University of Manitoba’s faculty of medicine.
A new team called the Office of Rural and Northern Health will co-ordinate the efforts.
By spring, the office will be set up in a rural town, said Kevin Beresford, chief executive officer of the Interlake Health Authority. Beresford will chair an advisory committee to the office that includes rural people such as Rivers, Man., mayor Roy Stevenson.
The government announced on Dec. 14 it will spend $5.9 million over the next six years to add 15 spaces in first-year medical school classes at the University of Manitoba.
The faculty will spend more time, energy and money promoting medicine as a career to rural high school students, Beazley said.
Research shows rural students are more likely to become rural doctors, especially if their training includes time in rural hospitals.
Since entry into the faculty requires top grades, promising rural students will get extra help with science classes, a subject often covered less rigorously in rural schools than urban ones.
Beazley said the students will get help studying for the medical college admission test, training for faculty admission interviews, and finding places to live in the city.
He said there are no plans to reserve spots in the medical school for rural students.
That could be a weakness in the plan, said Dewar. She said it’s well-documented that rural first-year university students’ grades suffer when they move to an unfamiliar city.
Although a high grade point average is critical for getting into medical school, Dewar said studies reveal high grades don’t make a difference in students’ success after they have gained entry.
Beazley said the medical school’s curriculum will change so that undergraduate medical students start studying rural medicine earlier and have more electives in the field.
In July 2001, the faculty will add 15 new residency positions, nine of which will train family doctors for rural practice. Currently, six of 24 residents train for rural practice at the regional hospital in Dauphin, Man.
The spots are highly sought after, said Beazley, noting the hospital provides more hands-on training than the larger Winnipeg hospitals.
The university will also establish two new family medicine training sites in rural or northern towns over the next two years.
Robert Webster, president of the Manitoba Medical Students Association, said he thinks the plan is well-founded.
“But unfortunately, the government is missing the big picture. We need to retain medical students in the province and give them incentives to stay,” he said, citing students’ crushing debt loads.
The plan will also help rural family doctors get more training by providing more one-year residency positions.
For medical practices to survive in rural Canada, doctors must be able to get advanced training in areas like surgery, obstetrics or anesthesiology, said Dewar, who co-ordinates Saskatchewan’s training program.
However, licensing bodies for these medical specialties aren’t keen to recognize or certify the skills, she said.
