Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the NTHSSA and the department, you know, they work closely together and they work with their partners with the medical association on, you know -- and I'll highlight an article today that the medical association is doing a lot of things that they feel that they can try to, you know, work with their staff; however, turnover in physicians throughout the Northwest Territories, historically, you know, has happened but this, again -- and I highlight this is not something that is isolated to the Northwest Territories. This is something that my colleagues, health Ministers in jurisdictions across Canada, are struggling with. There is some work being done at the national level to identify -- as I recently was at the FPT, and we had this discussion on data. So we actually know what the vacancy rates are in physicians and primary care physicians and family physicians, in specialty areas, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, all of the fields that we are currently seeing that we have vacancies in. And, Mr. Speaker, one of the things that they've identified through gathering that data is the amount of positions that -- or amount of spaces in schools that are producing -- that are college students and, you know, going into. The graduates of all of those programs across Canada are not even enough to fill those gaps with the numbers of people that average retire through every year. So there is a national plan on looking at how can we open up more seats across Canada, how can we use that data to improve, you know, providing more training, more health professionals across Canada, because that's the area that we're struggling right now across Canada in. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Lesa Semmler on Question 634-20(1): Recruitment and Retention of Physicians
In the Legislative Assembly on March 11th, 2025. See this statement in context.
Question 634-20(1): Recruitment and Retention of Physicians
Oral Questions
March 11th, 2025
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