Red carpet rolled out for future doctors

Twenty-six future doctors were treated to a weekend of fishing and fine dining at a lodge near Swan River as part of the latest recruitment effort by four municipalities in the region.

The medical students, who went home Sunday, were also given hands-on training in suturing and casting procedures at the town’s hospital and clinic, as well as free transportation from Winnipeg and back.

Recruiting medical professionals is something people who live in the nearby municipalities take seriously, says Duane Whyte, a Swan River town councillor.

“We flew 10 doctors in here one time, and I think eight of the 10 stayed,” Whyte said.

“Now, many of them have moved on, but they were the nucleus of the group of doctors that we’ve kept. They were instrumental.”

Swan Valley West Reeve Bill Gade says the initiative is well worth the investment.

“I haven’t seen the final numbers yet, but my guess is it will cost us $20,000 to $25,000 for the weekend,” Gade said.

“And we’re going to keep doing this, showing medical students the area and trying to talk them into this being the best place on Earth. Because if you think of all the communities in Manitoba a doctor can practise in, how many communities have they chosen to stay for a weekend?” he said

“We want to be on that short list of three or four places that they’ve actually seriously looked at. You never know what will come of it.”

For several years, Swan River has hosted first- and second-year medical students from the University of Manitoba’s Max Rady College of Medicine at the Swan Valley Health Care Centre and Primary Care Centre through the Rural Interest Group (RIG) program.

RIG is a student-led U of M program but is organized by Prairie Mountain Health and the local community eager to host the future physicians.

It’s an excellent opportunity for medical students to see what a rural physician practice could look like, said Tamara Kemp-Boulet, PMH’s physician recruitment and retention co-ordinator.

“There have been several times that RIG weekends have been an influencing factor on a student to consider rural family medicine,” Kemp-Boulet said in an email to the Sun.

“We are grateful to this community for all of their efforts and working with us to provide this opportunity to the students,” she said.

This was the second year in a row that the RIG weekend was paid for entirely by Swan Valley Medical Professional Recruitment and Retention Committee, which oversees a communal fund.

Committee members are from four municipalities: Minitonas-Bowsman, Swan Valley West, RM of Mountain and the Town of Swan River.

Each municipality pays into the fund based on its census numbers, said Gade.

“Whatever the census says, multiply that by $16 and that’s what each municipality contributes. At the moment, we have about a million dollars,” Gade said.

Last year, there was an additional $1 million in the fund, which was used to purchase a new CT scanner for the Swan Valley Health Centre, Whyte said.

“We felt that was important in recruiting doctors. It’s like trying to hire a mechanic without having any diagnostic equipment in your garage. And from a health-care perspective, it’s been awesome for our community,” he said.

“People in the valley can go to Swan River and get their evaluation and treatment right away as opposed to driving to Brandon or Dauphin, Winnipeg or The Pas.”

The money in the fund has also been provided to committee members for recruiting trips to speak to medical residents, as they did last month in Brandon and two years ago in Steinbach.

Parting gifts were also given to the medical students who spent the weekend in Swan River. They received hoodies, hats and sweaters, as well as gift certificates for the local ski hill, rounds of golf and hotel accommodation.

“Quality of life is what we sell,” Whyte said.

At one point, members of the recruitment and retention committee offered medical professionals a lump sum to move to the community, plus an incentive for free housing.

But Gade said they’ve changed that philosophy.

“We used to do like everybody else, where we just wrote a cheque and hoped for the best. But you give somebody $50,000 and they stay for two years — well, that’s not what we want,” Gade said.

“We want somebody who’s going to come here, like the community and want to stay long term. We want you here because you’re happy here.”

There are now 10 full-time-equivalent physicians seeing patients at the Swan Valley Primary Care Centre and Swan Valley Health Centre, which has an emergency department that’s open 24-7.

Gade said there should be at least six more physicians, according to PMH. He said the health authority said 16 would keep up, but 19 would be better, when considering appointment wait times and the number of patients per doctor.

That’s why Gade said they’ll keep recruiting.

“I would like it to be at the point where people are saying we wish we could practise in Swan River, but there’s no space,” said Gade.

“Ideally, I would like us to be the most sought-after place where (someone would say), ‘I’ll go practise someplace else until I can get a spot in Swan River.’ That would be fine by me.”

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