Nova Scotia still struggling to find family doctors, despite incentives

With a large waitlist of Nova Scotians seeking a family doctor, some are struggling to receive the care and medication they need.

That includes Patrick Crosby, who lives with anxiety and depression.

"Its frustrating cause all my life I’ve had care," said Crosby.

As of April 1, more than 88,000 Nova Scotians have been on a wait list for a family doctor.

An office set up this fall has recruited 96 doctors, 50 of which are in family practice. The office has also gone on recruitment missions overseas.

"Seven doctors who are practising in the United Kingdom are going to be considering a site visit to Nova Scotia," said Dr. Kevin Orrell, the CEO of Office of Health Care Professionals Recruitment.

Doctors willing to move to Nova Scotia and work outside of the central zone are being offered a $25,000 signing bonus and $20,000 at the conclusion of each year of up to five years.

Despite incentives, a major challenge to bringing in doctors is the competition.

"There’s massive doctor shortages in the same countries we’re trying to recruit from. The NSH in the UK, they’re 50,000 doctors short," said Chris Parsons with the Nova Scotia Health Coalition. "In India where we’re recruiting doctors there’s estimates as high as 600,000 doctors short."

Parsons questions whether recruitment from those countries is realistic and even ethical.

He says he believes one solution would be to add more Canadian medical schools.

“We need to think of building more medical schools, but most importantly, dealing with the way we train doctors after medical school, which is really the choke point, that we do have Canadian doctors that want to return to practise here but can’t get residencies to become qualified," Parsons said.

Any doctor trained in the UK, U.S. or Australia and has practised for five years can be licensed in Nova Scotia right away.

Other international trained doctors have to undergo an assessment program, which currently has eight people.

"Which represents the largest number of people that have been enrolled in this program. They’re destined for communities in need of family physicians," Orrell said.

In the meantime, Crosby will rely on virtual care, even though he prefers in-person.

"We have an aging population and lots of different mental health issues around and just need more doctors to even just scrape the barrel of all the issues," Crosby said.