TISDALE — Despite the Saskatchewan Health Authority having trouble finding doctors across the province, Tisdale has a full team.
“We have five physicians there so there are no vacancies,” said Doug Dahl, Communications Director with the Saskatchewan Health Authority. “We are having some coverage provided for physicians leave but that’s all that’s happening now.”
This doesn’t mean Tisdale doesn’t need doctors.
“Right now in Tisdale there’s a full complement. Sometimes we need to bring in... people to work on a temporary basis while people are away for a variety of issues.”
The big problem for Saskatchewan’s doctor numbers is when a doctor leaves, it can take a while for them to be able to be replaced.
“It can always be a challenge when it’s around five. If somebody leaves, it can take a while to replace,” Dahl said. “That’s some of the problems when it comes to physician recruitment in Saskatchewan.
Saskdocs tries to recruit physicians to fill these positions so there aren’t gaps.
“Sometimes when a physician is in a community they give advance notice they may be leaving or retiring or whatever thee case may be,” said James Winkel, spokesperson for Saskdocs. “In that case it gives the community and practicing physicians time to plan ahead and maybe talk about possible ways they could find someone to transition into practice”
Unfortunately, that is not the typical case.
“What typically happens then a community is left without physician services there, or in the case of one physician leaving, with one physician short for a period of time until they can find someone to fill that spot,” Winkel said.
When finding someone the first action is to look locally.
“Longest case scenario, lets say nobody is interested, because that’s always our first priority finding someone local who would be interested. “
The next step is the Saskatchewan International Physician Practice Assessment (SIPA).
“When that’s not possible or that’s not seeming to be working we go the next possible route which is finding someone through SIPA,” Winkel said.
Going through SIPA the average time to get a doctor would be four to six weeks.
“Sometimes that’s not always the case, sometimes it all depends on timing because no particular region is guaranteed a seat on SIPA, there are only so many training seats three times a year.”
If it isn’t through SIPA it could take longer.
“In some cases if it’s a hard place to fill we find someone overseas, but by the time they make the decision to actually move and go through life... It all kind of depends on how fast they want to move it through, it could take anywhere from six months to a year before they finally get here.”
