Glen Vienneau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 23/00) - The increased hours spent on call is one frustrating factor that may be keeping doctors from coming to the Northwest Territories.

"It sort of makes it less appealing," admitted Dr. Sylvain Chouinard, who left Yellowknife earlier this month after serving 12 years as an internal medicine specialist for the Stanton Regional Health Board.

When Chouinard was in Yellowknife, he worked on a weekly rotation of on-call duty.

That was in addition to his hours spent at the Stanton Medical Centre, from 8:30 a.m to 6 p.m.

"You have to come and see the patient. Otherwise, you don't know what kind of correlation to make," he said, adding, typical on-duty calls include times when there were "out of hand" situations when a patient became unstable.

"All you need is one patient and your whole week can be just spent doing night and days," he said.

Chouinard said while the current shortage of general practitioners is having an effect on the workload facing specialists, he believes more specialists are needed in the NWT.

Presently, Yellowknife has one permanent internist. The board is presently in the process of recruiting one locum internist to replace Chouinard until the new year

Chouinard believes if there were three permanent internists the workload would be more evenly allocated.

When Chouinard started working in Yellowknife in 1988, there was one specialist in each field -- one internist, one radiologist, one pediatrician and one private clinic surgeon.

As of mid-August, the board had two obstetrician/gynecologists, two ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialists, two orthopedic surgeons, two general surgeons, two pediatricians, two radiologists, one psychiatrist and one ophthalmologist.

"We have to find ways to keep enough qualified workers up here," he said.

One advantage specialists have over general practitioners is that they are compensated through a salary package, rather than the fee-for service billing system.

The Department of Health and the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Board is currently looking at implementing a salary package for all physicians in the Yellowknife region.

"It certainly simplifies our lives tremendously and gives us more time to spend on what we should be doing on the first place," he said.