REGINA - The government of Saskatchewan is encouraging American-based doctors to come up north.
On Wednesday the province announced a digital recruitment campaign in partnership with the Saskatchewan Healthcare Recruitment Agency.
The campaign is dubbed "Saskatchewan is Calling" and will be launched this spring in provincial, national, and international markets including in the United States.
According to the province's news release the campaign "highlights current career opportunities, upcoming physician-focused information webinars, and will promote the many benefits such as competitive compensation, lower cost of living, work/life balance and stability offered in Saskatchewan."
The campaign also acknowledges the "uncertain political climate in the United States" by noting the stability and security doctors and their families can experience in Saskatchewan. Among the targets is to attract more emergency medicine physicians, anesthesiologists, and family physicians.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday at the Legislature, Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill said this was an opportunity to attract doctors, especially Saskatchewan doctors who may have made their way to practice in the USA.
He said he had heard from physicians about "anecdotal bits and pieces over the last few months about colleagues maybe they trained with or previously worked with who are working in the United States."
"And there's some uncertainty if they're on a visa. And we see an opportunity. We see an opportunity to attract some of these people to come home, practice in Saskatchewan or even if they're not from Saskatchewan, come and practise in a place where there are pretty aggressive incentives and some good opportunities."
Cockrill also noted there has been an increase in traffic over the last year or so to their Saskatchewan Healthcare Recruitment website from Americans.
"Partially that has to do with from the fact that from a licensing pathway perspective, we've been able to make some changes working with the College of Physicians over the last couple of years, where if a physician has an American board certification, they can get a license here in Saskatchewan. we worked over the last couple years to make that licensure pathway as smooth as possible. That's part of being competitive... financial compensation has to be good, you can have additional incentives but you have to make sure the licensure pathway is good."
In speaking to reporters Health Critic Vicki Mowat welcomed the changes.
"It's certainly a good move to be exploring our options," Mowat said. "We know that we have serious issues with recruiting and retention within healthcare that have led to a crisis in our healthcare system, where we have closures across the province, emergency rooms that aren't able to be open. This government has failed to deliver when it comes to their recruiting and retention Health Human Resources plans."
One concern Mowat did express was that there were already internationally-educated physicians in Saskatchewan right now "who are trying to work in the system and haven't found a pathway to do that."
"We have long advocated for these folks to ensure anyone who wants to work in healthcare in Saskatchewan can be worked with to figure out how to do that. In many cases these are Saskatchewan residents, Canadian residents who have been trained elsewhere, came back to their home province, and are just looking to have a career in the same field they were trained in."
