Two Fort St John doctors to relocate to Fort Nelson

By Derek Bedry
Alaska Highway News
Closure of the North Peace Medical Clinic and the nearing departure of several Fort St. John Medical Clinic physicians are expected to place “significant strain” on the community short-term, but may not amount to a doctor shortage, said Northern Health officials.
North Peace will close March 31st after its two doctors leave town. One of those physicians, Dr. Ioana Lupu, said she wants to practice in a smaller community, but be able to take vacations.
“Primarily, we didn’t really have anybody as backup in the clinic, it’s just me and (Dr. Francois Hattingh) and we’re married,” Lupu said. “Whenever we want to take holidays together, it’s very hard to find locum.”
Lupu and Hattingh are moving to Fort Nelson because at the time they made the decision to move, Fort St. John did not seem to have great need of extra doctors, and the City no longer provides the community environment they desire, she said.
“I was looking for a small, tight-knit community and that’s what it was when I first came,” Lupu said.
“Now with the big hospital and it being far out of town, it’s difficult for us to spend any time in the doctors’ lounge at the hospital, so we don’t really have the exposure to our colleagues we used to have. The unity, the cohesion, the protection that we get from each other, the friendliness, all that is more or less gone.
“There’s very little of it left, I see someone in the hospital it’s like, ‘oh my gosh, I haven’t seen you in three months.’ I go do my rounds, they go do their rounds, but the hospital being so vast you don’t run into each other. So it’s not the community I wanted to practice in as far as one that’s rural.
“I’m from Burnaby and it’s becoming very much like Burnaby General. I don’t know the nurses, they don’t know me, I go there and sometimes they ask me, ‘who are you, are you visiting a patient?’ It’s become a lack of teamwork or the feeling of decreased teamwork.”
Lupu said it wasn’t until she and Hattingh had committed to the move they learned that “several” other doctors are also quitting the Fort St. John Medical Clinic over the next six months.
“Fort Nelson made the offer to us and when we went to visit, it seemed like the community really needed somebody,” Lupu said. “So it was very touching that they were willing to offer a place for us to Stay. The mayor’s office was very helpful in terms of facilitating the move, it seemed like they really needed somebody. It was very touching for us because we’re interested in providing service to an under-serviced community, and Fort St. John at the time we decided did not seem to be as under-serviced as Fort Nelson.”
She added they will be two of four physicians in the new Fort Nelson clinic, enabling them to take holidays.
With Fort St. John Medical Clinic left to pick up the slack from the North Peace closure, staff predict some difficulty booking appointments for existing patients and accepting new ones. Wait times will also increase.
This does not mean Fort St. John is necessarily facing a shortage of doctors, said Steve Raper, Northern Health director of communications.
“I wouldn’t say there’s an imminent shortage or a panic we’d want to get into, this is a larger turnover in terms of potentially more than just one or two physicians in a short period, so we’ll have to replace them in the interim and the long term,” Raper said.
“But if we have enough heads-up and the time to do the recruitment we need to do, hopefully we’ll replace them in short order.”
Furthermore, Raper said the city in particular should not be difficult to cover.
“Fort St. John has been a community where we’ve had lots of success attracting physicians and it’s been quite stable so we’re very confident we’ll be able to replace those that are moving on to different communities or retirement or what have you.”
He added that Northern communities can always use more physicians.
“We’re searching generally all the time, we’re never 100 per cent physician-staffed across the North,” Raper said.
“We’re always looking at attracting physicians to northern communities, some more than others. We’re working to provide stability and make sure those physicians that do come to our communities stay.”
The North Peace Medical Clinic is handing over patient files to a private company, which will charge a fee for having those files transferred to Fort St. John Medical. Fort St. John Medical Clinics’s website notes these files are often unorganised and not summarised for a new doctor’s ease of reading, which will cause greater delays in patient service.
No spokespersons from the Fort St. John Medical Clinic were available to comment by press time.
The B.C. government recently announced incentives to attract doctors to rural areas, including Tumbler Ridge and Chetwynd, that gives doctors $50,000 when they begin work and another $50,000 after a year. The physician must return the money if he or she does not complete three years service in the community.
The other communities where doctors are eligible for incentives are Bella Coola, Burns Lake, Clearwater, Cranbrook, Galiano Island, Hazelton, Kitimat, Nakusp, Pemberton, Port Alberni, Port Hardy, Princeton, Quesnel, Terrace, and Tofino.
The doctors must provide full-service family practice as well as hospital emergency support, inpatient care and support for residential care and outreach for First Nations or other communities. They must also provide the full range of specialty work required by the regional health authority.
Hudson’s Hope Mayor Gwen Johansson also announced Wednesday that area will have its first resident doctor after five years, Rurik Hubner from Cumberland, B.C., who will arrive in August. Previously, different doctors visited Hudson’s Hope on rotation two to four times a week.

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