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Thousands of people in Fort St. John will soon have access to a family doctor, thanks to two new physicians who are nearly ready to start practicing in the city.
Dr. Manraj Khangura and Dr. Haroon Ahmed are international medical graduates finishing up their two years of residency training in the city. They will take on 3,000 new patients starting in September.
“We’re super thrilled to have them join,” said Dr. Hannah Galeazzi, vice-president of the North Peace Division of Family Practice.
The province says it’s been able to bring nearly 1,500 new family doctors into B.C.’s health-care system since 2017.
But in Fort St. John, most new doctors take over existing practices and don’t accept new patients.
Galeazzi says having two net new doctors to pare down waiting lists will ease pressure throughout the local health-care system.
She says many people without a family doctor end up using the emergency room for basic primary care.
“It’s really tough for patients when they don’t have a family doctor because there’s lots of stuff that is not an emergency, but they don’t really have anywhere else to go,” Galeazzi said.
“It will just only be positive to have more physicians that are able to see patients on a regular basis … do their age appropriate screening and manage their chronic disease.”
Northern Lights College opened a health lab at their Fort St. John campus this week. The six-bed training classroom is intended as a practice space for nursing and health-care aid students. As the CBC’s Tom Summer reports, it’s part of a strategy to improve health-care programming in northeast B.C.
B.C. boasts recruitment efforts
The provincial government says B.C. now has the most doctors per capita in the country.
On Wednesday, the health ministry said B.C. now has more than 15,000 physicians, with 271 doctors per 100,000 residents, more than half of whom are family doctors.
The ministry says upwards of 77 per cent of residents in the province now have a primary care provider, with 600,000 people connected to either a family doctor or a nurse practitioner since 2023.
“We’re making progress,” Premier David Eby said. “Seventy-seven per cent is not 100 per cent, and that is the goal we’re moving to.”
The ministry says more than 500 American health professionals have accepted jobs in the province as of last month, including 109 doctors, 315 nurses, 51 nurse practitioners and more than two dozen “allied health professionals.”
In Fort St. John, Galeazzi says the city’s residency program is helping recruit and keep doctors in the north.
She completed her residency in the city in 2022, and says familiarity helps new doctors transition into their practice.
“It’s nice to work where you trained,” she said. “You can just focus on medicine and you don’t have to focus so much on logistics.”
The city’s residency program has two spots for Canadian graduates and two for international graduates.
Galeazzi says work is ongoing to establish community partnerships to help recruit and retain locum doctors who travel to fill service gaps.
Being able to offer incentives like housing and transportation keeps the city competitive with other smaller, rural communities.
“Everyone’s doing their absolute best to try to provide services to the community,” she said.
Subscribe to CBC’s Fort St. John Weekly for a roundup of the best news and stories from B.C.’s Peace and Northern Rockies.
