Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping speaks in Edmonton on Dec. 6, 2022.--CP FILE PHOTO
reporter@medicinehatnews.com
Two themes emerged from a virtual roundtable with Alberta’s Health Minister Jason Copping on Monday – efforts to attract more health-care professionals, particularly in rural areas, and providing training facilities in rural areas so locals trained there can remain there to work.
“We as a government have made a commitment that we are going to restore the services that have been impacted by a shortage of staff,” said Copping. “It is the single, biggest issue that is impacting our ability to provide these services.”
For doctors, an announcement was made last week to invest into looking at doing clerkships and residencies outside the large urban centres, starting in Lethbridge and Grande Prairie.
“If you train a local and hire a local, people are likely to stay in those areas. That is a longer-term solution,” stated Copping.
That is a long-term program. For the short-term, there are the RESIDE program and the Rural Renew Stream, which have been put in place to recruit and retain doctors, particularly in rural areas. RESIDE is for resident or new in-practice family physicians to move and work into rural and remote parts of Alberta.
“My understanding is we are getting ongoing numbers of applicants into that program and we are continuing to accept them,” Copping said.
Rural Renew Stream is looking into immigration pathways and working with the CPSA and AHS, he said.
“Lethbridge was challenged a year ago with the number of family doctors. Over the course of that year, 17 international medical grads have accepted to come into Lethbridge and a number have already started work.”
Copping says COVID broke open several cracks in the system that were already there, and higher rates of retirement have also taken a toll. He toured the province and says he spoke with about 1,100 health-care professionals who raised concerns regarding staff and the impact on rural areas.
“We fully recognize that is the case and we’ve taken steps to address that,” he said during Monday’s roundtable. “In budget 2022, we increased across the province thousands of seats in post-secondary institutions for health-care aides, LPSs and nurses because we recognize a need to train and hire locally, and by getting those seats out into rural Alberta, people will likely stay.”
He went on to discuss a new program in Wainwright where the University of Calgary has set up an online two-year nursing program. Those in the program then go into local hospitals to do their two-year practicum on the ground that will allow them to achieve certification.
AHS is also reaching out to other countries, such as the U.S. and U.K., where there is a surplus of nurses and working with both colleges of nurses in the province to streamline their accreditation process. Mount Royal University has also invested in a bridging program for LPNs who want to upgrade to RN..
