Dr. Kevin Orrell of Sydney, N.S., will serve as interim associate dean of the medical campus at Cape Breton University, which is scheduled to open in September of 2025.
“I think I’m well-placed. I’ve had 33 years of experience practicing orthopaedic surgery in this area,” said Orrell.
Orrell is also a former deputy minister of the provincial Department of Health and Wellness, where he helped oversee the provincial response to COVID-19 and played a part in physician recruiting efforts.
“All of those experiences have helped me to understand what the province requires, the crisis in health care that exists right across the country, and how small increments can help fix and fill the gaps that exist in the current system,” he said.
There are more than 145,000 Nova Scotians on the primary-care waitlist.
Orrell says the campus will work to be part of the solution to this problem.
The satellite campus will focus on rural and family medicine and graduate up to 30 students a year.
But some have concerns around who will teach and provide hands-on experience for students.
“The medical school itself will attract new physicians to the area, so I think that’s actually a self-correcting problem. I do think the first couple of years are going to be a scramble, but that would be the case even if we were fully-staffed because we’re starting something new and it’s going to be a learning curve,” said Dr. Margaret Fraser, a Cape Breton physician.
Fraser, who was born and raised in Sydney, says the new school is long overdue to train the lack of graduating physicians in this country.
“The statistics will bear me out that Canada does not train enough physicians to replace the physicians who are retiring or leaving for other reasons, and has not for my entire lifetime, so it’s high time to train more physicians and I think this is a great place to do it,” said Fraser.
Orrell says the push is on to make sure everything is on schedule with a tight deadline before opening day.
“Prior to 2025 in September, we have to be ready to accept applicants and to interview them, so really a great deal of the work we do will prepare us the process in 2024,” said Orrell.
Orrell says the first graduating class would be scheduled to finish in 2029.
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