While the Pender Harbour Health Centre prepares to lose its only physician as Dr. Colin Sutton departs in mid-November, it is getting ready to welcome a new health professional, with provincial funding for a nurse practitioner position approved. In a briefing to the community at the Pender Harbour and Area Residents Association Town Hall meeting on Oct. 22, spokesperson for the centre board Diane Hopkinson reported that interviews to fill that job have been held. Once a candidate accepts employment and joins the staff, that individual will be able to cover a number of physician-type services such as patient consultations, writing prescriptions and making referrals for specialized medical services.
Physician search continues
“The board is still working hard to recruit a physician,” she said, explaining that a local search firm has been hired to help with that process. The centre’s opening for a general practitioner is being advertised across Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the British Isles and beyond. “We are now looking at Israel and a few other places” she added.
In her view, the largest impediment to recruiting a physician for the centre is “the system that the hospital runs on here." She explained that Sechelt Hospital does not have “hospitalist” physicians who work within that site. It relies on general practitioners working on the Coast for coverage of emergency room and other hospital-based services.
For Dr. Sutton, Hopkinson said, that often equated to 70-plus hour work weeks to cover those requirements and operate his practice. The added time it takes to for the 30-kilometre drive from the centre to Sechelt Hospital is a further burden on the work-life balance for anyone considering taking on the physician’s role at the centre. She said the volume of on-the-job hours is making physician recruitment challenging and that the centre's board has approached Vancouver Coastal Health to see if there are options to reduce the hospital service requirements for a Pender-based doctor.
When asked by meeting attendees if financial or housing incentives could be offered as part of the physician recruitment process, she said the board is looking at those, but has not determined what can be offered and where the funds to pay for those could come from.
She noted that any new physician would “get a large incentive when you consider that they are walking into an established practice with 900 patients." In addition, she noted that the practice comes with a list of individuals looking to become patients, more than $500,000 worth of office supplies and equipment and the availability of other services like dentistry, chiropractors and mental health programs within the same location for their patients.
One member of the meeting audience encouraged the inclusion of a financial bonus in the physician recruitment package, stating that “without it, you are fishing without bait."
