An information evening last week aimed to raise awareness around the challenges facing the health care system in Morden, but there was also some optimism.
The challenges of course center around the shortage of physicians and its impact on services, but representatives of Menzies Medical Centre emphasized they remain hopeful things will start to improve soon.
“I think we have some good hope. There’s some really great initiatives happening through the Manitoba government with some recruitment and retention initiatives. So I think that’s going to help,” said executive director Nicole Walske.
“We also have a fair amount of local residents who are in medicine right now,” she added. “And so that is giving us some hope that hopefully they’ll want to return to our community because they know it. We have those conversations on a regular basis.”
“We have a huge opportunity in the next couple years with a lot of local graduates to keep many more,” agreed Dr. Kevin Earl, who has been practicing in Morden since 2010 and is also the medical site lead for Boundary Trails Health Centre (BTHC).
The presentation noted that, on average, the wait time for a family physician right now can be three to five years.
In total, there are about 24,000 patients who access care services through the clinic, and there are around 14,000 who have a family doctor or primary care provider.
Of the remaining 10,000, there are only 2,000 who are registered on the family doctor finder, and Walske and Earl both stressed it is vital that more people sign-up.
When new physicians arrive, they go to the family doctor finder list. With two recent arrivals, the clinic asked for a list of 75 patients which would include 15 with higher needs and the remainder moderate to low needs.
“They need to register with family doctor finder because that’s where we get our list from,” said Walske.
“And also the province doesn’t see the need in our area [if people don’t register],” added Earl.
As primary care providers, the doctors here deeply care for the community and for the health of the community, Earl said.
“We realize that access is challenging and difficult, and so this evening was hopefully to provide a little bit of insight into the background behind those challenges and just to give some simple ways to maybe making access to care easier for them.”
In outlining the demands placed on local doctors, Earl explained there are 30 roles they have to fill daily at BTHC.
“Between the roughly 50 physicians between Morden and Winkler, there are those 30 roles that are required just to allow the hospital to function, and those roles are over the course of 24 hours, so evening and overnight roles.
“If you’re working overnight, it means that the next day you’re not able to do duties, so it’s really a puzzle to put our schedule together and to make it work.”
As a result, it has meant some reduction in some of the services at times.
“We currently have double coverage with some crossover for 11 hours of the day, and then there’s 13 hours during the day where there is only one physician for the emergency department.”
Earl noted there are some key things to keep in mind in addressing both recruitment and retention.
“The key to recruitment … what we’ve seen over the past decade is having learners that rotate through the area, fall in love with the area, fall in love with the community, and want to set down roots and practice here,” he said.
“And so the interactions with those learners, those are key when they make their decision of where they want to practice and work,” Earl continued. “So seeing that the community is caring and accepting of them, seeing that they’re willing to see them when they’re in the learning stage [is important] … and when they hear from people in the community all the wonderful things about living in the community, it gets them excited about being here.”
Earl also noted another key step that has been taken to up their recruitment efforts.
“Residency is the last stage of a physician’s training, and so when our clinical teaching unit started taking on residents, we would take on two per year in a two-year program, so four in total. Starting this July, we’ve expanded to five per year, so 10 residents in our community every year at any given time,” he explained. “So we’ve really expanded that … that’s a huge opportunity to keep all 10 of those people here.”
Walske concluded by stressing they want to do all they can to help people navigate the system.
“We hope that people access resources. I’m always willing to have conversations with people to help them to understand,” she said. “I want people to be able to help themselves with the information that we have and maybe sharing that with everyone.”
