The Bonnyville Covenant Health Centre is on the verge of being able to offer primary health care to everyone in the community after the local doctor recruitment committee successfully recruited six new doctors.
Dr. Leigh-Ann Smith and Dr. Stefan Palkowski arrived in the community in mid-2015.
Dr. Keeve De Villiers and Dr. Marli Du Toit came in July and officially started working at the local hospital in November.
Dr. Jonathan Barnard and Dr. Theresa Watson arrived in the province on Nov. 8 and will be joining the Bonnyville hospital after a three-month assessment in Westlock. The mandated assessment period is to ensure the doctors training is up to par with Canadian standards.
Once their assessment is complete they will join the rest of the staff in Bonnyville as general practitioners.
“This community is always growing. We have had so many patients out there without physicians. Throughout our recruitment efforts we are trying to have that eliminated. We want every patient who needs a doctor to be able to get one. That is our goal,” said hospital administrator Alex Smyl at a dinner to celebrate the achievement in November.
All six new doctors were brought into the community by the Bonnyville doctor recruitment and retention committee, which consists of members from the town, MD and local hospital.
The three groups formed a welcoming committee, and filled a bank account for the sole purpose of offering new doctors loans when they arrived to the community.
“It is super expensive for the first while. Just paying all of the registration fees and everything else would have been next to impossible it is wasn't for the support we got from that fund, the hospital and the town,” said de Villiers, who has accessed the funds to help purchase a house in the community.
For their efforts the local committee was given an award by the Alberta Rural Physician Action Plan (RPAP).
“They recognized that they had an issue and that it had to be solved by having a formal plan and getting everyone, the doctors, the community, and local health community, coming together and attacking it,” said David Kay, Executive Director of RPAP.
