72-year-old Canso doctor calls for better succession planning

After practising drugs for 47 years in Nova Scotia, Dr. Cathy Felderhof is seeking to cut back her workload and take a while off.

However discovering somebody to take her place has been a problem.

She’s been trying to find two years for a physician to take over her position in Canso, on the jap tip of the province’s mainland. She’s had no luck.

She doesn’t need to go away except a substitute household doctor is employed within the rural group she has grown to like over the previous 17 years.

“It will be like leaving your youngsters behind, you’ve got taken care of them,” stated Felderhof. “You’ve gotten taken care of all generations and also you get to know them very properly, so that you need to make certain they’re taken care of.”

She has been serving to take care of the group of about 800 individuals together with two different medical doctors on the Canso Medical Centre.

They work in one-week rotations. In the course of the rotation, they’re on name 24/7 because the emergency room physician for the Jap Memorial Hospital throughout the road.

“We get calls throughout the evening, not each evening,” she stated. “It is a powerful job within the sense that I am drained after I go away on the seventh day.”

Physician shortages have been an issue for a variety of years in Nova Scotia. As of  April 1, there have been 88,359 Nova Scotians on the household observe registry wait-list.

‘My job is to maintain the affected person’

Felderhof is just not able to retire, however she want to take a while off this summer season to think about subsequent steps. It is one thing she has by no means carried out in her lengthy profession.

“I am unable to even bear in mind after I final took per week off to inform you the reality. It is onerous to stroll away.”

She want to see an improved technique relating to succession planning for medical doctors.

It has been a difficulty for years, she stated, and as of now there isn’t any physician scheduled to work the second week of Might on the Canso household observe.

Whereas eager to work in partnership with Nova Scotia Well being on what the group wants, she believes the recruiting mannequin must be examined.

“It is not my job to be doing that,” she stated. “My job is to maintain the affected person, my coaching is to maintain individuals and their well being considerations.”

She stated she knowledgeable Nova Scotia Well being two years in the past she deliberate to depart.

Dr. Chris Milburn stated dropping down to 2 medical doctors within the rotation creates issues even over a brief interval. Milburn was recruited to the world by Felderhof round two years in the past.

“There’s a week’s value of sufferers that have not been seen, prescriptions should be refilled, they might have had an ache or a ache or one thing important that they must be seen,” he stated.

It is not practical for Milburn to work any further weeks. He has commitments to a observe in Sydney.

He stated one among his largest considerations is the influence on emergency care in Canso.  

“If we go down to 2 docs, inevitably we’ll have some weeks the place there isn’t any physician right here,” Milburn stated.

He stated the closest hospital is in Guysborough and that may be 45 minutes away if the climate is poor.

Some individuals within the space have been working with the native medical doctors to attempt to deliver extra consideration to the problem.

“We’re simply doing what we will as advocates for our group and this space,” stated Invoice MacMillan, who desires to see Nova Scotia Well being make rural well being care extra of a precedence.

“We’re involved about different communities much like ours within the province of Nova Scotia the place they’ve the identical wants. Fifty to 60 per cent of individuals in Nova Scotia are taken care of by rural clinics or rural hospitals.”

Figuring out the place medical doctors are most wanted

Dr. Kevin Orrell of the province’s new workplace of Well being Care Professionals Recruitment stated he recognized succession planning as a key space that wanted consideration when he took the job.

He stated he is grateful for Felderhof’s dedication to her group. Work is underway, he stated, on a method to determine which communities want new physicians within the province.

He stated efforts are taking place on a variety of fronts to aim to recruit medical doctors, together with a $125,000 incentive for medical doctors who arrange outdoors of RisePEI.

“Now we have acknowledged for a time [that] rural drugs has been difficult and the substitute for these medical doctors which have labored so onerous in these areas goes to be a plan that we have to provoke transferring ahead,” Orrell stated. 

That plan may look much like one he helped introduce when he was president of the Canadian Orthopaedic Affiliation. That plan had senior surgeons mentoring youthful medical doctors over a number of years.

As well as, Orrell stated he’s in touch with Dalhousie College, aiming to search out medical college students who’re prepared to coach in rural areas. Searches are additionally underway for medical doctors throughout Canada in addition to in different international locations.

He accepts these methods will take time however, within the quick time period, medical doctors who work as locums may be thought of for some places in want.

The health-care recruitment workplace has a purpose of hiring 100 new medical doctors yearly for the following 10 years.

Nova Scotia Well being has posted a job for a household doctor in Canso, however Orrell stated two medical doctors is perhaps wanted given many senior medical doctors take care of a lot of sufferers.

Felderhof has steered mentoring youthful medical doctors on the way in which to handing over a observe is one thing she thinks will work however is hoping new insurance policies get put in place shortly.

“I’ve acknowledged that I believe the state of affairs is pressing.”