MAPLETON – Township council has agreed to support the Minto-Mapleton Family Health Team’s (MMFHT) professional recruitment and retention efforts in 2023 by continuing the municipality’s annual financial contribution of $10,000.
Council approved the contribution after hearing from a health team delegation at the Feb. 28 meeting.
“There’s a global shortage right now of healthcare staff,” MMFHT recruiter Alison Armstrong told council.
“That goes for everything from physicians right through to nurses. So it has been a very challenging … few years for us, whether it’s at the hospital dealing with COVID, or just our staff shortages right now,” said Armstrong, who offered a “hats off” to the team involved in the recruiting efforts.
“They’re amazing. Everybody’s pulled together. We’re trying to think of different ways to recruit people,” she said noting the health team was “very fortunate” recently to be able to bring in two health care professionals to cover a practice maternity leave.
“A lot of that thanks has to go to Dr. (Christine) Peterkin,” said Armstrong.
“The reason why those people are coming to stay and work here is because she trained them in Minto-Mapleton …
“They were able to come in have an experience here, a very good experience and then they’re able to graduate and step into that role.”
She explained communities across the province are competing “for the same people,” which makes bringing in new recruits a challenge.
In addition, she noted, many graduates aren’t looking for the traditional rural model of owning their own practice and taking on the overhead that comes with it.
“Many of the graduates that are coming out right now have high debt load. They cannot get a mortgage for a house so, in their mind, why would they settle down and set up shop in a primary care practice where you’ll have overhead and administrative costs and all these other things?” Armstrong pointed out.
“So that’s pushing them to look at different ways to pay off debt,” including work as a locum, to fill in for other health care professionals.
“Many are going into what’s called a ‘hospitalist,’ which is a new role.
“And those are physicians that are hired specifically for hospitals to look after inpatients,” said Armstrong, noting that particular model is not used at the Palmerston and District Hospital.
“Our rural family physicians do it all. They are our primary care doctor in our community clinic, but they’re also our OB doctor, our ER doctor, our inpatient doctor, our surgical assist doctor – they’re the doctor of everything,” Armstrong explained.
“However, we’re having problems attracting that type of candidate. So part of our strategy has been medical training, which again, Dr. Peterkin been carrying the load for that.”
Armstrong noted the idea is to “get people into the community and experience it.
“Once they experience it, they realize how exciting it is; they would be bored if it was just (working) every day in an office,” she said.
In an effort to provide potential recruits with “the most positive experience while they’re here,” Armstrong suggested community donations, including gift certificates or “getting them out for dinners, theatre” are appreciated.
“Anything that can help to further welcome the residents, so they feel like this is some place that they could see themselves living, being a part of, setting roots down in, anything that the community can do to support us in that way, will be extremely appreciated,” added Peterkin.
She told council the MMFHT residency program continues to be “well supported.
“We had a bit of a lull last summer, but picked up full force in the fall and are actually booked straight through right now until well into the summer, which is nice,” she noted.
“Our ‘choose your own adventure’ approach has really been well received by our interns as they really get to tailor their experiences to what is of interest to them,” Peterkin added.
“And I feel like this is truly in alignment with the flavour that we’ve seen in our new grads being more assertive in what they want out of their careers. And the beauty is that we can offer them those many options right here in our very own backyard.”
MMFHT nurse practitioner Jodi Colwill explained nurse practitioners can be part of the solution to personnel shortages, but funding is needed.
“We currently have a nurse practitioner who’s covering a maternity leave and she was our student and she would love to work here,” said Colwill.
“In fact, coming here, she’s working part time. She said, ‘I will work here full time.’
“We don’t have funding.
“There is currently no funding for expansion of scope of positions within our family health team … If we had more funding to hire more nurse practitioners within our family health team, I think it would be supportive, it would be done quickly and with very minimal barriers,” said Colwill, who asked for council’s support in sending provincial government officials the message “that we nurse practitioners can be an answer.”
The delegation offered to provide council with a draft letter of support to send to local MPP Matthew Rae to help push for nurse practitioner funding.
“I’ve adapted this to sort of speak specifically to rural and our unique circumstance,” said Colwill.
“So I’m happy to provide that to you in a draft copy that, if you guys agree to send that out… asking why aren’t we getting more infrastructure funding?”
Mayor Gregg Davidson invited the recruitment team to send a representative to join him and Minto Mayor Dave Turton in a delegation to provincial health ministry officials at the upcoming Ontario Good Roads Association conference.
“Now is the time to put in that delegation request,” said Davidson.
“So if we have your team wanting to come with us, we will put in a delegation request and we will go in front of the minister or the minister’s staff.”
“Absolutely,” replied Colwill.
Council received the delegation’s information and approved the requested $10,000 contribution to recruiting efforts.
