Regular readers of the ECA Review will note regular stories and press releases that either describe shortages of physicians in rural Alberta communities or public notices which alert residents to the closure of, for the most part, rural hospital emergency rooms. As the ECA Review’s readers are mostly rural Albertans, this issue affects you directly.
Recently, coverage in the paper has illustrated the challenges and solutions that communities like the County of Stettler and Kneehill County have faced when ensuring their local medical clinics are fully staffed with medical professionals while also ensuring there are enough skilled local professionals to keep vital facilities like emergency rooms open.
Rural Alberta communities which have experienced success in recruiting and retaining medical professionals know that communication is key. One of the most important avenues of communication to keep open is between community leaders and the local medical clinics that employ doctors.
The doctors themselves are the ones who will be most aware of why their peers are moving into rural Alberta, why they are moving out or why they never come into rural Alberta in the first place. The challenges and issues facing each rural community aren’t always the same. They could include housing, amenities, crime, educational resources, geographic location or any number of others but the community can’t address its particular issue if leaders don’t keep in touch with doctors and keep tabs on what is and isn’t working when it comes to recruiting and retaining medical professionals.
Some members of the community may be familiar with the fact Alberta Health Services (AHS) handles physician recruitment for communities across Alberta. This is a key statement that may hold more information than what a reader can glean from first glance.
Yes, AHS handles physician recruitment for communities across Alberta. Virtually all of them. AHS doesn’t play favourites and isn’t going to focus on your specific community any more than it can focus on other communities.
We live in a free society and medical professionals are at liberty to find a community that offers them a rewarding employment opportunity plus the kind of amenities they want in their lives. Many medical professionals are family people and they’ll likely want to live in a community that meets their professional needs, but also the needs of their families. Essentially, physicians are free to choose the community they want to live in.
When looking at large cities like Edmonton and Calgary, which have international airports, shopping malls, professional sports teams, private schools, world-class recreational facilities and many more obvious amenities; one might wonder why a physician would ever choose to live in a small community or rural area at all.
That’s where small and rural communities must step up and engage in their own recruitment. There are plenty of reasons to live, work, play, enjoy life and retire in a small or rural community and when it comes to attracting doctors and other medical professionals it’s up to those small communities to toot their own horns. If AHS recruits for communities the same way, then all those communities are essentially in competition with each other for doctors and if rural Alberta communities want to ensure they have adequate, stable medical services those communities need to step up and do their own recruiting based on their strengths, advantages and unique benefits.
A quick look at the advantages of life in a small or rural community include a lower rate of crime, especially serious violent crime, plus the fact that property values, and thereby property taxes, tend to be lower the smaller you get. It’s no secret right now the value of property, and size of tax bills, in Edmonton and especially Calgary is spiralling; while less serious crime like mischief tends to be higher in rural areas, murders, organized crime, armed robbery and similar offences tends to be much lower. In a 2023 press release, Stats Canada stated, “Rural residents were more likely than urban residents to live in a place with a relatively low crime rate.” Both of these are factors anyone interested in raising a family should ponder.
It behooves rural Alberta communities to examine closely what makes them unique and sets them apart from other communities and get that information out to prospective medical professionals. If doctors don’t know about these benefits, they can’t base their career choices on them.
Stu Salkeld
Local Journalism Initiative reporter
ECA Review
