Quebec the breeding ground for many New Brunswick MDs
CMAJ 2000;162:1465
Twelve medical students will say au revoir to Quebec's Université de Sherbrooke this year — as they have done in varying numbers for the last 19 years — and head home to New Brunswick to do their residency in family medicine. This one-of-a-kind residency program, launched with a single student in 1981, is designed to help recruit and retain francophone FPs in New Brunswick.
And the need for them has never been greater, says Dr. Michel Landry, director of family medicine for the province's francophone teaching program. New Brunswick has an anglophone physician:patient ratio of 1:559 patients, but the ratio for francophone physicians is 1:838.
New Brunswick, which has no medical school, buys 20 seats at Dalhousie's medical school each year and another 20 at 3 Quebec schools, at least 15 of which must be at the Université de Sherbrooke. When the Sherbrooke graduates are ready to move on to their residencies, New Brunswick opens its doors to 12 of them.
In their first year, the residents spend 6 months in rotation at local hospitals and 6 months at the family medicine clinic in Dieppe, a private clinic run by 10 physicians, who oversee the residents. In their second year the new doctors spend 3 months in rotation, 3 months in the clinic and the rest of the year in another family medicine setting in a francophone community such as Bathurst or Edmundston. "The residents learn the type of practice they will be doing later on," notes Landry. "They feel at ease to come back and work here."
They certainly do. Of the doctors who do their residency in New Brunswick, 91% return to practise there; of NB students who do their residency in Quebec, only 53% return to practise in the province.
Despite the success of the residency program, Canada's only officially bilingual province remains critically short of francophone physicians. Landry and his colleagues have proposed an increase in the number of residents in the special program. "To meet the demand for [francophone] family physicians in New Brunswick we need 15 extra students a year. We're working very hard putting lots of pressure on the government to see the number of seats grow. We've asked for 5 extra seats next year. We'll ask for 5 more the year after that." — Donalee Moulton, Halifax
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