Alberta government develops plan to train and retrain rural physicians

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Rural Alberta needs more physicians, and the provincial government has plans to fill the gap.

The provincial government announced yesterday that it will invest $224.8 million through Budget 2024 to train more physicians in rural areas.

Because of the lack of doctors in rural areas, rural Albertans must travel long distances to seek medical care, the province said in a news release.

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The government will work with post-secondary institutions to train more doctors in rural areas. If students study in rural areas, they are more likely to stay there after they graduate, the release said.

Post-secondary institutions collaborating in the project include the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, the University of Lethbridge, and Northwestern Polytechnic. The schools will help develop new Rural Medicine Education Program Training Centres in Lethbridge and Grande Prairie.

Universities in Calgary and Lethbridge will collaborate to develop a training centre in Lethbridge, while the University of Alberta will partner with Northwestern Polytechnic to develop the training centre in Grande Prairie.

Adriana LaGrande, Minister of Health, said the regional training centres will attract and retain physicians in rural communities. She said the training centres will strengthen the local primary health care systems and take pressure off local emergency departments.

The training centres will offer hands-on learning experiences in rural communities and contribute more than 100 practicing physicians each year.

Once they are running, the training centres will provide primary care in Lethbridge and Grande Prairie, and each general practitioner in the teaching clinic will be able to care for about 1,200 patients.

Clinics will operate after regular hours to take the strain off rural emergency departments and add more primary-care capacity, the province added.

About the author

Alexis Kienlen is a reporter with Glacier Farm Media. She grew up in Saskatoon but now lives in Edmonton. She holds an Honours degree in International Studies from the University of Saskatchewan, a Graduate Diploma in Journalism from Concordia University, and a Food Security certificate from Toronto Metropolitan University. In addition to being a journalist, Alexis is also a poet, essayist and fiction writer. She is the author of four books- the most recent being a novel about the BSE crisis called “Mad Cow.”