The Town of Cochrane is continuing to work on recruiting doctors to the area, says mayor Peter Politis.
During a regular council meeting on Tuesday (Sept. 26), Politis made a verbal report about doctor retention and the Worker Bees project, noting that they're continuing their efforts to bring new doctors to the region.
“In terms of doctor retention, the Worker Bees project that we've started working on as a council with the other municipalities in Iroquois Falls and Matheson is moving along. It's moving along a little slower than what we had hoped at the end of the day, quite frankly, there's some challenges there,” Politis said.
“There's some areas that we need to sort of make a little bit more functional, but we've got a direction established and setup where we're looking at incorporating the recruitment side of it to allow for a number of things.”
One important component is the ability to be able to qualify for funding, Politis said.
“Anywhere we can get funding besides the municipality will be very helpful and obviously we should try to do that,” he said.
Another area to focus on is putting together a skills-based board comprised of people in the industry who understand doctors, recruitment and the process of recruitment, Politis said.
“And understand what will it take to attract doctors, for example. We recognize that all doctors are different. So we would need an entity or an individual of the skill set who would be able to reach out to each individual prospect, analyze the needs of the prospect, provide for those needs, and therefore attract that doctor,” he said.
“The key part that we tend to forget is the retention side. There needs to be skill sets involved in keeping any prospective doctors and their families entertained. So, outdoor excursions, recreation, social development, focus just on the doctors and their needs and continuing to keep them active.”
At one time not too long ago, there were many doctors in the community, Politis said.
“Many of them were here for many decades, raised their families here, stayed here, and became part of the community. That's something that we need to try to do as well,” he said.
