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- Page navigation anchor for Recruitment and retention of physicians in underserved areasRecruitment and retention of physicians in underserved areas
A recent visit to a cardiac surgery unit in Sri Lanka made me realize how similar the medical problems of a country like Sri Lanka and Canada are. Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka has a population of 88,000 but serves the adjoining provinces, giving a catchment area of 1 million people. The sole cardiac surgeon performed 100 cases per year in the public hospital and had over 1000 patients waiting, having grown that list in just two years since starting the programme. While he also has an opportunity for private delivery of his services in his city , a pipeline for those who have means to other more established centres 6-8 hours south has existed for a number of years. His hospital has only 4 anesthesiologists who cover both the public and (after 4 pm and on holidays) private sectors. The surgeon would like to have both more OR time to deal with the growing backlog of patients and another surgeon to help, and had asked me to try to determine ways in which this could be achieved. I spent time analyzing his situation and realized that he had a similar problem to our western health care systems, namely recruitment and retention of physicians in underserved areas.
In order for him to get more time in either sector, and hope to recruit another cardiac surgeon, I told him he would need more anesthesiologists, not equipment or even beds as he had hoped I would say. While there was a need for beds, this was not the primary obstacle to growth-recruitment was. There was a...
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