ST. STEPHEN, N.B. – New Brunswick’s Liberals are pledging to overhaul the way the province recruits health professionals should the party win the Oct. 21 provincial election.
Leader Susan Holt, campaigning Tuesday in St. Stephen, N.B., said the party would change the compensation model for doctors and increase the number of residency spaces for doctors in training.
The Liberal plan also promises to streamline the process for recognizing the credentials of foreign-trained doctors and other health professionals.
Though she released few other details, Holt said 10 additional physician training seats at Dalhousie University in Halifax would cost $430,000 each year.
“We need to innovate in how we recruit health-care professionals,” Holt said. “A centralized departmental model that continues to focus on vacancies instead of health-care professionals hasn’t worked.”
She said the recruitment plan includes calling on local communities and health professionals to help with presenting offers that might appeal to individual doctors and other health professionals.
“When we identify a health professional that wants to practise in New Brunswick, we find the role that fits them — we don’t try to fit them into our box,” Holt told reporters.
“We need to make sure we are tailoring our offer to what the health-care professionals want to do to be here, and we have to employ a team of people to do it.”
Holt said the Liberal recruitment program would also do a better job of tracking the number of job offers and how professionals are being identified.
“It’s about getting out there and aggressively head hunting the talent that we want,” she said. “We need to supercharge our recruitment process because we are losing the recruitment battle with other provinces.”
The latest announcement adds to previous Liberal commitments to establish at least 30 new community care clinics to help cut primary care wait-times and a program to provide retention payments to nurses.
On Monday, Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs promised to reduce health-care wait-times by expanding the scope of practice of nurse practitioners, registered nurses, registered psychiatric nurses, paramedics and pharmacists.
But the party did not provide details, saying it would work with medical professionals and their governing bodies to “evaluate all scopes of practice.”
Meanwhile, Higgs did not have any campaign events scheduled for Tuesday. A party official confirmed he spent the day preparing for a televised leaders debate on Wednesday night.
Higgs, who is seeking a third term in office, is expected to square off against Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon.
CBC TV will begin broadcasting the debate at 6 p.m. ADT from the Empress Room at the Capitol Theatre in Moncton. The event will also be carried live to an online audience cbc.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 24, 2024.
