Patients discouraged as Nova Scotia's primary care waitlist climbs to 137K
Breaking records can be a good thing but patients aren’t impressed by the record number of people on Nova Scotia’s waitlist for a family doctor or nurse practitioner.
As of March 1, there were 137,587 patients on the Need a Family Practice Registry — representing about 14 per cent of the province’s population.
“It’s discouraging,” said Allie MacKay who finds herself on that list. “It’s hard to try to seek out care.”
Of the nearly 6,500 patients who added their names to the registry in February, about a third said they did so because they were new to the area while about a quarter said their practitioner’s office had closed or moved.
Linda Watters’s doctor retired recently.
“It’s awfully hard, you know because you have different issues but you think ‘oh well, it’ll go away’ and you just let it go,” Watters said. “And sometimes maybe you shouldn’t.”
Premier Tim Houston’s Progressive Conservative government was elected on a promise to fix health care.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Health noted how the population of Nova Scotia is growing and the province has expanded virtual care, added pharmacy clinics and launched mobile units.
According to data from Nova Scotia Health, between April 2022 and the end of February, 138 physicians started working in Nova Scotia — 66 of them are family doctors. But during the same time about 74 physicians left their practice — including 46 family doctors. NSH anticipates another 19 physicians to start practicing in Nova Scotia by the end of March.
Earlier this month, CTV News reported the Southend Family Practice, which serves about 4,000 patients, will close in August after failing to find common ground with the province to secure a replacement physician to take over any patients. Last week, CTV News also reported how a medical clinic in Clark’s Harbour has sat empty for two years.
According to Doctors Nova Scotia, about 25 per cent of Nova Scotia’s doctors are over 60 years old. Retirement hasn’t peaked yet but retention is also a challenge.
“There’s significant burnout amongst the medical profession and that includes family doctors,” said Dr. Leisha Hawker, president of Doctors Nova Scotia. “I think, too, the career as a family physician has gotten harder over the years.”
Hawker points out how physicians are seeing more complex patients that take more time than the typical 15-minute appointment.
There are calls for more collaborative care clinics where physicians work side-by-side with other practitioners including dieticians, social workers and mental health counsellors.
“But also these collaborative clinics need payment models that help to work with a collaborative team,” said Hawker.
“There’s a couple different models out there that aren’t fee-for-service that work better to support family doctors.”
Hawker also believes senior physicians should be encouraged to continue working in whatever capacity they can and want to in order to prolong their careers.
“In an ideal public health-care system, everyone would be working to their top of scope and we’d be working collaboratively together,” Hawker said.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
![](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.6946509.1719687583!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_800/image.jpg)
Who are the richest people in Canada? Here's how many billionaires there are
If you gathered all the wealth that billionaires currently have worldwide, you would have about US$14.2 trillion, according to Forbes Magazine. But what about in Canada alone?
'7 years of regret': Raunchy leg piece wins bad tattoo competition at Edmonton Expo Centre
Friday night was a celebration of mistakes for a small group of body art enthusiasts.
Time crunch, rules mess could plague a Liberal leadership race
Calls have intensified for Justin Trudeau to resign as head of the party he almost single-handedly pulled back from the brink after a decimating electoral defeat in 2011.
Despair in the air: For many voters, the Biden-Trump debate means a tough choice just got tougher
The sound you might have heard after the presidential debate this past week was of voters falling between a rock and a hard place.
Lightning deal Sergachev, Jeannot; Maple Leafs acquire Tanev's rights at NHL draft
General managers wheeled and dealed Saturday in Sin City.
235 flights cancelled as WestJet waits to hear from labour minister on next steps in mechanics strike
WestJet said 235 flights have been cancelled Saturday as it waits to see what the next steps are in its ongoing labour dispute with its mechanics.
A year ago, she drank battery acid to escape life under the Taliban. Today, she has a message for other Afghan girls
Holding a mirror steady in one hand, Arzo carefully applies pencil to her brows as she gets ready for an English lesson a short walk from her home on the outskirts of Pakistani megacity Karachi.
A Florida auctioneer was about to sell an 1800s pocket watch. He learned it was a stolen piece of U.S. presidential history
A pocket watch that belonged to Theodore 'Teddy' Roosevelt was returned to his New York home this week after it was stolen decades ago and later showed up at an auction, according to the FBI and the National Park Service.
U.S. and Europe warn Lebanon's Hezbollah to ease strikes on Israel and back off from wider Mideast war
U.S., European and Arab mediators are pressing to keep stepped-up cross-border attacks between Israel and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah militants from spiraling into a wider Middle East war that the world has feared for months. Iran and Israel traded threats Saturday of what Iran said would be an 'obliterating" war over Hezbollah.