Jessica Klinkenberg
Northern News Services
Monday, February 26, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Yellowknife has a healthy roster of family doctors, but smaller communities are a challenge to staff says the territory's physician recruiter.

"Big demand and low supply," is the rule of thumb when it comes to recruiting doctors, said Gordon Ross.

Ross flew to Montreal for a conference on Feb. 20 with the Canadian Association of Staff Physician Recruiters (CASPR). Ross is a member of the association and said the conferences provide a chance to network, share resources and brag.

"It brings together about 100 different physician to talk about what works best," he said.

He said the North is a profitable place to begin a career in medicine, because unlike down south the NWT covers expenses for things such as gloves and swabs that a family doctor down south would have to buy on their own.

"Generally we're finding that with physicians they tend to work where they know."

He said doctors who come from rural areas are more willing to come up North.

But staffing the smaller communities is still a challenge. Locums - doctors in temporary positions - travel to the communities on a rotating basis.

"(There's a) maximum of 10 full-time positions (in smaller communities)," Ross said. "Those positions are being filled by locum physicians." Ross said he estimated the NWT has close to 90 per cent of the physicians it requires.

He said the staffing situation in the NWT is better than before. With an increasingly competitive market for physicians down south, Ross said that the territories are doing well when it comes to attracting doctors.