Doubling the number of residencies for medical school graduates in Nova Scotia is the only way to have enough locally educated physicians in order to reduce the province’s long wait times for health care, says the president of Doctors Nova Scotia, which represents over 3,500 physicians.
In recent weeks, two women died after spending hours waiting for care in Nova Scotia emergency rooms.
“Knowing that we probably need about 100 new family doctors per year over the next 10 years—if you wanted to have all of your family doctors locally grown and trained, which is the ideal because then they’ve been trained in the health-care system in which they’re working and they’re a little quicker to transition into the practice—then you would have to double the number of residency spots,” Dr. Leisha Hawker told The Epoch Times….