St. Martha’s Physician-led Initiative 

Physician Recruitment and Retention

Creating A Healthy Workplace at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital- A Physician-led, Community Supported Initiative

 In the words of Dr. Moses Coady, Father of the Antigonish Movement, we needed to become “Masters of our own Destiny”. Thus in early 2019, with the aid of a local facilitator 48 of our 70 physicians gathered to develop a plan of action to recruit and retain physicians. We worked to engage physicians, community members, local businesses and politicians to keep St. Martha’s current and effective. A master plan was developed for Physician Recruitment and Retention with actions and deadlines.

Numerous grant applications were made –successfully. Our thanks to DoctorsNS, the Provincial Government and St. Martha’s Regional Hospital Foundation, local businesses and our own physicians for their generous financial support – essential to make it all happen. Groups of physicians and community volunteers attended conferences, identified with and contacted local medical students and residents across the country, visited new doctors and families with community contacts and gifts, gave out boxes of PEACEFUL Chocolates (Peace by Chocolate) to thank locum physicians, and have created other plans for the next few  months. They range from enhanced medical staff social events which are always popular (snow shoeing at Keppoch Mountain, Curling at the Highlander Curling club in St. Andrew’s, Christmas parties, lobster boils) to mentoring new physicians and pairing new families with established doctors.

We now have this new website and a Facebook page, as well as quite a variety of other social media presences. We want the world to know us and we want the world to call us -especially doctors. We expect a large number of retirements over the next three years so we are interested in medical students, residents and practicing doctors.