Burns Lake council has agreed to submit a resolution to the North Central Local Government Association asking the province for funding to hire more nurse practitioners in northern B.C.
According to council, hiring more nurse practitioners would help alleviate the shortage of doctors in northern communities such as Burns Lake.
“Nurse practitioners provide an excellent means of supporting doctors in meeting the needs of those seeking medical care and allowing physicians to focus on more complex and challenging patient heath complaints,” says the resolution.
Although hiring nurse practitioners could help alleviate the shortage of doctors, Burns Lake Mayor Chris Beach says that is only part of the solution.
“Let’s be clear that nurse practitioners will never fully replace doctors, but they can greatly help in meeting the primary care needs of our residents,” he said.
Burns Lake currently hosts five physicians working 3.5 full-time equivalent hours while three full-time postings are open and undergoing recruitment.
“While we definitely have a current shortage of doctors, some communities have fewer doctors than we have,” added Beach. “Nevertheless we need to keep striving to bring more doctors to our community and I’m optimistic we are going to be able to do this.”
According to Northern Health, nurse practitioners do not address doctor shortages, rather they "augment and enhance" primary care services in rural communities.
“There are some acute services that are beyond the scope of practice of nurse practitioners such as acute care and emergency room calls, and we find their role can be used most optimally in community team-based primary care,” explained Andrea Palmer, a spokesperson for Northern Health.
Burns Lake currently has two full-time nurse practitioners who also travel to multiple communities to help provide care.
“In the whole of Northern Health, there are 28 nurse practitioners, and there are vacancies open that are being addressed on an ongoing basis through recruitment efforts,” said Palmer.
Northern Health's recruitment strategy for nurse practitioners includes national - and sometimes international - sourcing of candidates. In addition, Plamer says Northern Health has been working in partnership with Carrier Sekani Family Services to determine the physician service needs for Burns Lake and surrounding areas.
Rural communities in Canada have had difficulties recruiting and retaining physicians for decades.
According to Elizabeth Wenghofer, associate professor at Laurentian University’s School of Rural and Northern Health, there isn’t a shortage of physicians in Canada per se as much as a problem of “maldistribution.”
According to Statistics Canada and the Canadian Institute for Health Information, 13.8 per cent of British Columbians were living in rural areas in 2011 while only 6.3 per cent of physicians were working in those areas.
Wenghofer points out that the main challenge is not attracting physicians to rural areas, but retaining them.
“There have been numerous policy initiatives and incentives to recruit physicians to rural areas,” she said. “The problem is that they [physicians] often leave afterwards.”
The North Central Local Government Association (NCLGA) convention will be held in May 2017. Resolutions endorsed by the NCLGA membership are then conveyed to senior levels of government.