New Brunswick med students off to Newfoundland

CMAJ 2000;163(3):320

"Improving accessibility to services for New Brunswickers means having a plan to ensure that New Brunswick is open to doctors," Health and Wellness Minister Dennis Furlong says. "This component of our physician recruitment and retention strategy will provide long-term benefits to people throughout the province."

At present, there is approximately 1 physician for every 600 New Brunswickers. The government's goal is to reduce this to 1:575 by 2003. The national average is 1:541.

The education plan will cost the government nearly $24 000 per medical student annually; the government will also pay travel expenses so students can do their clinical rotations back home. The plan marks a resumption of an earlier arrangement that was cancelled in 1992. New Brunswick also pays for a total of 40 seats a year at Dalhousie University in Halifax and the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec. Charlene Gaudet-Sleep, director of communications with the province's health department, says the additional seats mean that New Brunswick residents have a better chance of entering medical school than Canadians in some other parts of the country, even though the province doesn't have a medical school of its own.

The new spots don't mean the size of Memorial's medical school is growing. Dean Ian Bowmer says spots previously offered to American students for $30 000 per year will now go to the New Brunswick students instead, with first-year enrolment remaining at 56 students. New Brunswick will also pay to provide postgraduate training positions for the students it sponsors.

New Brunswick is not the only province to purchase placements in a medical school. Prince Edward Island buys 2 seats at Memorial, and the Northwest Territories is negotiating to purchase a seat at the University of Alberta. — Donalee Moulton, Halifax

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