August 14, 2018 – Tyler Kula, The Sarnia Observer
When it comes to residency opportunities for family medicine graduates, Sarnia isn’t on the list.
Changing that could help entice more primary care physicians to the area, say a pair of doctors investing $3.5-million in an expansion and renovations at the London Road Diagnostic Clinic and Medical Centre.
“Sarnia needs that in order to retain physicians here,” said Dr. John O’Mahony.
For comparison, Windsor has 10 residency spots and Petrolia has two, he said, noting Petrolia is the only location with family medicine residencies in Lambton County.
O’Mahony and Dr. Sean Peterson recently opened an 8,500-square-foot addition at the 481 London Rd., hospital-adjacent clinic in Sarnia.
They moved into the new space about a week ago and renovations are underway to the rest of the building to make it more open, O’Mahony said, noting the work is expected to wrap up in December.
The changes, including moving to electronic medical records, and hiring on more nurse practitioners and support staff – first steps towards the clinic’s current 15 doctors working in a team environment – have already reduced wait times, the doctors said.
“Involving our nurse practitioners and doing team-based care I think is the way forward because there’s just not going to be enough doctors to care for the aging population,” Peterson said, calling the Sarnia model “a little bit ahead of the curve.”
It also features lab and x-ray access, and a pharmacy.
The missing piece is creating a learning environment for new doctors completing their residencies so they can get exposure to the Sarnia area and hopefully take root when they open their own practices, O’Mahony said.
“Unless they’re from Sarnia, or there’s another compelling reason to come here, this has been a hard place to recruit for,” said the doc who recently joined the board with the Sarnia-Lambton Physician Recruitment Task Force.
The doctor recruitment agency has warned in recent years many local physicians with thousands of patients are on the brink of retirement.
O’Mahony and Peterson said they’ve both taken on extra patients in the wake of two doctors retiring in July.
“There’s a lot of competition with other cities, with other incentive programs,” O’Mahony said. “The future of family medicine I think has … to have a residency program as part of that.”
Getting there means working with Bluewater Health and the task force, as well as provincial funding for residency spots, he said
Family medicine residents also complete a third-year fellowship specializing in something like emergency medicine, obstetrics or palliative care, Peterson said.
Bluewater Health is planning to start offering those opportunities at some point in the future, he said.
“The vision down the road is we’ll have residents in a two-year program with us and rolling into a third year with the hospital, so it’ll be one nice seamless process,” he said. “And of course the whole goal from a community perspective is to retain them (as family physicians).
A Bluewater Health spokesperson said the organization has nothing to announce at this time, but would share information when there’s something to share.
Hopes are residency spots in other communities where the need isn’t as urgent can be moved to Sarnia, O’Mahony said.
The provincial government doesn’t currently fund enough residency spots for the number of family medicine graduates in Ontario, Peterson said, resulting in many going out of province.
“We need to convince the current government that maintaining residency spots in Ontario is important,” he said.
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