Cara Loverock
Northern News Services
Published Friday, January 18, 2008

YELLOWKNIFE - Stanton Territorial Hospital has recruited four new doctors to fill crucial roles that have been vacant for some time.

"We're probably right now in one of the best situations we've been in," said Sylvia Haener, chief executive officer of Stanton Territorial Health Authority.

"Those were the vacancies we've really been focusing on trying to fill for quite some time and we've really made inroads."

Dr. Peter McArthur, an ear, nose and throat specialist, has been hired, as well as an orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Derek Younge, who will start in August.

"Our other challenging area is psychiatry. And we hired two full-time psychiatrists who are starting in June, one of whom has fairly extensive experience in dealing with addiction," said Haener.

Dr. Frances Edie and Dr. Adrian Hynes will be Stanton's new psychiatrists. Dr. Hynes is well practised in the addictions field and previously worked in Nunavut.

Since the loss of Stanton's previous addictions specialist, Dr. Ross Wheeler, general practitioner psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses with training in addictions management have been providing care to the psychiatric unit.

Through a partnership, Tree of Peace staff have been coming to Stanton's psych unit to facilitate group sessions.

Haener said it can be difficult to recruit medical workers for the North because some physicians are concerned about maintaining skills, and acute and unusual medical cases in the North are often sent south.

"When you're hiring someone from the south, often their desire in a hot labour market is to be near family or certain facilities they want for children, those kinds of things," said Haener.

"When they compare southern locations to here, sometimes we don't offer everything that they want."

She said Stanton is interested in recruiting doctors who would like to manage their waiting list and travel to different communities in the North, something the North can offer that the south does not.