New Brunswick Minister of Health Dorothy Shephard says 98 doctors were recruited to the province in the last year — close to their target of 100.
But she says her department is focused on bringing a different strategy forward this year — the collaborative care model, where doctors are joined by nurse practitioners, registered nurses and dieticians in one clinic, sharing the workload.
Shephard says bringing more balance to the lives of health-care workers could make it more enticing to come to New Brunswick.
Tuesday’s provincial budget earmarked $3.7 million to make it a more common practice.
But the New Brunswick Medical Society was looking for something more specific to help with the human resource issue facing the health system.
“[I]t is concerning that physician recruitment and retention is not referenced directly in this budget, as this continues to be a critical challenge facing health care in the province,” said Dr. Mark MacMillan, president of the society, in a statement.
The president of the New Brunswick Nurses Union was also disappointed.
“In order to put a lot of these plans in place, you need the human resources to carry it out,” said Paula Doucet.
“We really need to be thinking about, how are we going to recruit to this province? We know that this nursing shortage is a global shortage, it’s not unique to New Brunswick. We need to make sure we have great working conditions which, we know right now we don’t.”
The province is short about 1,300 nurses.
The hospital system has been in a ‘red alert level’ since December, allowing thousands of appointments and surgeries to be cancelled or postponed to deal with the influx of COVID-19 patients.
“It is also disconcerting to see no mention of funds to address the significant backlog of testing and surgeries that has grown throughout the pandemic,” said Dr. MacMillan.
Shephard says she is still concerned about the emergency room offload times she’s seeing, specifically in the Moncton and Saint John areas.
She had announced a plan in late January, allowing paramedics to use their clinical judgment to take a patient to the ER, or find them alternative treatment options. Shephard says the plan diverted hundreds from the ER in the first few weeks, but she wants to see more improvements.
“I haven’t seen delay offload times come down. So that’s when I say, that’s what I’m worried about — I want our offload times to come down, I want our ambulances back in our community,” she said.
