New Brunswick to get medical school

A new medical school in New Brunswick is raising hopes that the Maritime province will be able to more effectively recruit and retain physicians from within its own population.

The New Brunswick Medical Training Centre — the first of its kind in the province — will open its doors in Moncton in September.

Students and 18 new faculty members for the 4-year, French-language program are being recruited in a unique partnership between the University of Moncton and the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec. The University of Sherbrooke will provide the medical curriculum and grant the degree, but the teaching will be done at facilities in Moncton, allowing potential New Brunswick doctors to train in their home province.

Plans are also in the works for a satellite English program in Saint John, possibly by next year. Discussions are under way with the University of New Brunswick, and Memorial and Dalhousie universities.

„It's a very positive thing for New Brunswick,” says Dr. Rose Anne Goodine, president of the New Brunswick Medical Society. „It's a lot harder for a young person to imagine being a doctor if there isn't a local program. I think that having a local program opens that door to more students.”

According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island — the only provinces without medical schools — had the lowest number of physicians per capita in Canada in 2004.

Goodine says New Brunswick's existing physician shortage will complicate faculty recruitment for the new programs. She hopes physicians continue to see patients but also „participate in more teaching.”

The Moncton program will hire the new faculty over the next 3 years to handle clinical training, and hopes to graduate an average of 22 students a year, beginning in 2010. The Georges Dumont Hospital in Moncton will be the affiliated teaching hospital.

Currently, NB medical students studying in French and enrolled in the Sherbrooke program split their 4-year degree between Sherbrooke and the University of Moncton and do their residencies at Dumont and other hospitals around the province.