WINNIPEG (Staff) – Medical students say Manitoba’s medical community is unfairly making new graduates solve a long-existing shortage of rural doctors.
Under a new system, recent medical students will be all but forced to practice for at least four months in rural or remote areas of the province to get a permanent billing number from the government so they can get paid.
Last month, the provincial government, with the blessing of the Manitoba Medical Association, set a cap on the number of billing numbers. New doctors are issued a conditional number, which will be made permanent if they serve in designated areas. Dr. Robin Carter of the association said this measure could temporarily help with the shortage of rural doctors.
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However, Carter said if the total count of billing numbers rises above the cap, “there would be strong pressure on us to take away somebody’s billing number” from the conditional list.
“We’re desperately hoping this won’t happen because it’s a very messy situation,” Carter said.
Medical students said the new rule is messing up the way they’ve planned their training. Many planned to practice in the city, and now feel they don’t have adequate training to deal with the variety of medical problems that rural doctors treat.
Richard Kostyk, of the Manitoba Medical Students’ Association, said many students will help “stamp out fires” under the new provisions by going to rural areas for four months. But he said many may quickly leave for the city once they have their permanent billing numbers.
“It’s not necessarily good for rural communities to have someone popping in for four months and then popping out. That’s the whole problem to begin with,” he said.
Kostyk has told the committee that students feel “all physicians … should be accountable for the problem. We don’t buy the suggestion that this should be solely the responsibility of new graduates.”
He said unless all doctors help, there could be a backlash causing “even more of a physician crisis, because people will just refuse to be dictated to where they’re going to go, especially when the conditions are not improving.”
Rural and urban doctors have suggested that medical students are expecting too much freedom when other graduates, such as teachers or nurses, must go wherever the jobs are.
But Kostyk said students believe the new rule simply protects older urban doctors. “That really gets (students’) backs up because they see the establishment protecting their income by denying us the ability to work.”
