A heartfelt thank you to the community leaders and organizations who joined us on November 1 at UVic for the Attracting & Retaining Family Doctors roundtable co-hosted by SIPP and the Victoria and South Island Divisions of Family Practice.
Focused on creating collaborative, multi-jurisdictional, cross-sectoral approaches that will lead to outcomes for the South Island, this interactive event convened family doctors, alongside representatives from municipal governments, academic leaders, community organizations and business organizations.
“It’s encouraging to see all segments of our region so aligned around the need for family doctors,” says SIPP CEO Aaron Stone. “We need to take urgent steps toward real solutions. Business leaders are hearing from prospective employees that access to family doctors is a barrier to moving to Greater Victoria or being able to stay in the region. Municipal leaders see the issue as a growth constraint that prevents them from building the housing and community amenities that population growth demands. Overall, this is a barrier that prevents holistic economic prosperity.”
The purpose of this second in our series of Family Doctor Stakeholder Roundtables was not just to identify key challenges to attracting and retaining family doctors, but bring leaders together to explore the actions that various organizations and local governments can take. Challenges outside the mandate of healthcare were identified, such as access to quality childcare, addressing employment opportunities for spouses and family members of healthcare personnel, ensuring that doctors and their families are welcomed to our communities and integrated so they want to stay, as well as addressing the need for clinic space modernization (vibrant workplaces, integrated team environments, different types of clinics in operation and ready to welcome new physicians, etc).
Facilitated by Dr. Cheryl Mitchell, Academic Director of UVic’s MBA in Sustainable Innovation, the event elicited hundreds of ideas to strengthen our community’s role in the healthcare system. Speakers included Dallas Gislason, SIPP’s Deputy Director of Regional Economic Development; Niki Bouchard, Physician Retention and Recruitment Program Lead, South Island Division of Family Practice; and Dr. Melissa Duff and Dr. Anna Mason, board representatives for the Victoria Division of Family Practice.
The Attracting & Retaining Family Doctors roundtable emerged from SIPP’s 2023 Local Leadership Forum where municipal leaders prioritized attraction and retention of healthcare workers as a key constraint to regional prosperity. They recognized that addressing it should be a shared journey between all orders of governments, community leaders across sectors, alongside doctors and healthcare personnel themselves.
This is a complex issue that demands a collective, collaborative response. We are excited to continue this momentum, and we welcome more voices to future conversations. Stay tuned for upcoming cross-sector opportunities to collaborate, share ideas and empower our region’s healthcare landscape.
To learn more about this and get involved, please contact Dallas Gislason.
