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It’s an ongoing discussion in Kelowna and many other Canadian cities, and it doesn’t seem like it’ll end anytime soon.
As more of the aging doctor population moves, retires or dies, there aren’t enough younger doctors stepping in to replace them.
This has left an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 people without a family doctor in the Okanagan.
Jesse Thompson is family medicine resident in Kelowna and according to him, it’s not tough to get a job in Kelowna, the difficulty lies in getting a residency spot in Kelowna.
“Kelowna is one of the most competitive programs in the country,” explained Thompson. “There’s often thousands of applicants for about eight spots.”
The logical solution would be to increase the amount of residency spots, but that's easier said than done.
“Colleges and universities are making efforts to increase the number of spots, but that means expanding facilities and getting more funding,” said Thompson. “All of our medical education is expensive, but it is subsidized, so they have to apply for that funding, they have to get expansion, they have to get more teachers, they have to get more administrative staff and logistically it’s more difficult.”
If there aren’t enough spots in Kelowna’s residency program, why aren’t more doctors coming from elsewhere to fill the void?
It’s because there are shortages all over the country and according to Thompson, people will typically stay and practice where they trained.
In Kelowna’s residency program, there’s currently 13 people in first year and 13 people in second year.
The addition of 13 family doctors a year seems like it would go a long way towards solving the shortage, but Thompson says that the dynamics behind the second year of the residency put a wrench in that plan.
In the second year of the program, residents are sent throughout the Interior in an effort to expose them to what it's like practicing in rural areas.
The incentives that come with a being a family doctor in a rural community are enough to keep a lot of those residents from returning to Kelowna.
“If you’re in a rural community and you’re offering a job to a new doctor, you’re able to get money through the government to give a certain amount of rural retention bonus,” Thompson said. “Kelowna is kind of a major center, so we don’t have that luxury and nothing extra is offered.”
That won’t change either, as the incentives are meant for attracting physicians to small towns that otherwise may not be able to attract doctors at all.
With that being said, the Okanagan recruitment department is working tirelessly to bring more doctors into Kelowna.
It’s a slow process, but Thompson says they’ve been doing a great job and the incentives for Kelowna lie within the Okanagan lifestyle that comes with living here.
Thompson also added that some people aren’t using the proper channels to try and connect themselves with a family physician and that there are a couple of ways to go about that.
The first is going through the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC’s website, where they have a ‘Find a Physician’ section.
The other is the ‘GP for Me’ program, which has hooked up thousands of people with a family doctor over the last few years.
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