While things are not great in Williams Lake for health care, there may be some relief on the horizon for beleaguered health care workers.
This was the message from Interior Health representatives giving Williams Lake city council a quarterly update at the regular city council meeting on Tuesday, February 27.
Diane Shendruk, VP of clinical operations for Interior Health north, Karen Cooper, executive director, clinical operations, Interior Health west, and Dr. Roland Engelbrecht, chief of staff for Cariboo Memorial Hospital, all presented as a delegation at the meeting remotely via Zoom.
Their presentation updated the council on some of the work Interior Health has been doing to deal with shortages. Shendruk said globally, the shortage of health care workers is expected to reach 10 million by 2030.
“So health care shortages are an international phenomenon,” said Shendruk.
Locally, Williams Lake will be seeing some relief in staffing levels in physicians, at least in the short term.
Five new physicians are expected to take positions in the community within the next year, one already having arrived.
All five are foreign-trained physicians. These physicians will be coming through the UBC International Medical Graduate and Practice-Ready Assessment BC programs. The requirement for these foreign-trained physicians to spend two years or more practicing in communities allows health authorities to direct physicians to higher needs locations.
Once they complete their requirements, they can relocate if they desire.
These physicians are expected to mainly be supporting primary care, along with inpatient and long term care services. One of the physicians has also expressed interest in supporting the emergency department.
After expressing appreciation for the work staff and the remaining physicians are doing, Dr. Roland Engelbrecht noted there is currently a 53 per cent vacancy rate for physicians in Williams Lake.
Since February of 2023, this has gone from 37 per cent to the current 53 per cent.
This is mostly being felt in the emergency department, the maternity department and family medicine, he explained.
Additional efforts have gone into recruitment due to this high level of vacancy. Extra incentives have also been approved due to the importance of Cariboo Memorial Hospital (CMH) within the region.
“This gives us a new way to highlight locum opportunities in Williams Lake to emergency physicians across B.C.,” said Engelbrecht.
Karen Cooper, presented on the trends in health care recruitment, with incoming employees and outgoing employees in 2022 nearly equal, but noting recruitment efforts have paid off to improve this rate of retention. She said five new nurses are coming to Williams Lake in the spring.
While the Interior Health vacancy rate sits at 11.7 per cent, Williams Lake is slightly higher at 15.3 per cent overall. But this rate is down from 21 per cent the year prior.
“Very hopeful data to be able to present,” said Cooper, noting the trend is still not steep and things will not be fixed quickly.
Specialty areas are the biggest challenge, with maternity and surgical, however, she said they are now at their lowest surgical vacancies in three years.
It was in April of 2022, after a dispute with Interior Health, surgeon Dr. Dan Brosseuk left Williams Lake after nearly 30 years at the hospital. His partner, an emergency room physician, left with him.
READ MORE: Longtime Williams Lake surgeon resigns over Interior Health admin changes