On May 1, the Atlantic Physician Registry is set to start
With the help of a new Atlantic Physicians Registry, doctors who live and work in the four Atlantic provinces will soon be able to work anywhere in the region without having to get any extra licenses.
After a meeting of the four Atlantic premiers on Monday, the registry was made public. The list should be up and running by May 1.
P.E.I. Premier Dennis King said the registry has been in the works for “the last number of months.” He said that doctors and surgeons can join the registry if they want to. If they do this, they won’t need any other licenses to work in any of the Atlantic provinces.
“Right now, when I fill out my college paperwork, I only get a license for Newfoundland and Labrador, so it’s hard for me to come work in P.E.I., New Brunswick, or Nova Scotia,” said N.L. Premier Andrew Furey, who is also an orthopaedic trauma surgeon.
“People who want to travel in the summer, for example, because PEI is a beautiful place and they want to spend a couple of weeks with their families, can do that.”
He also said that it will give the provinces a larger pool of candidates to fill “some gaps in the system.”
“We think that, especially for new doctors, there is a want and a desire to have a different style of practice—one that offers opportunity, geographic opportunity, and different experiences—that having this mobility and removing the barriers to moving around Atlantic Canada first and, eventually, the whole country, will be very attractive.
‘Not a competitive space
The premiers say that the goal of the initiative is not to take each other’s health care resources.
“We’re talking about temporary help,” said Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston, noting that a doctor can already move permanently to a different province if they want to.
They can also travel as locum tenens, but Furey said the paperwork for that takes about a month.
“I don’t see this as a space for competition; I see it as a space for collaboration, and when one person wins, we all win,” said Furey.
King did, however, hint that this could be a way to get people to join.
“We do know, for example, that we hired 40 doctors in 2021 in Prince Edward Island… Over half of them were temporary workers who came here through one of these agreements, did some work here, liked it, and decided to stay.
Not a magic bulle
The premiers said that the registry wouldn’t help the health care system deal with the lack of doctors.
Furey said, “It gives us more band-aids, if you will, to help fix some immediate problems while we work on a more moderate and modern system for the future.”
“Nothing we do in health is a magic bullet that will fix everything all by itself,” said King. “But I think this is one more small thing that will keep us moving forward and make a difference, not just now but in the future.”
King said he hopes that other health care professionals will be able to use a system like this in the future.