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Neil Patterson has a couple hours at home in Corner Brook in the morning before hitting the highway west to Stephenville for work, where he punches 80 hours a week at the family care clinic and the hospital.
But he said he’s not being properly compensated.
Patterson signed a contract with Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services (NLHS) with the promise of incentives and bonuses he said never came to fruition.
“The message I am getting from the government is they do not care about family doctors and they are not keen to retain us,” Patterson told CBC News.
Originally from Ontario, he came to N.L. for his residency training and fell in love with rural Newfoundland. He signed a two-year salary contract and works with the family care clinic in Stephenville. He’s also expected to cover the hospital and emergency room regularly.
“I’m tired and I’m exhausted,” he said.
Patterson says he was actively recruited to work in the province and was promised close to $200,000 in bonuses for things like serving in the community, being a part of the family care team in Stephenville and relocating to the west coast town.
He said he was also expecting a raise after working for one year but didn’t receive that either.
The government has offered incentives as high as $200,000 for doctors who will come and work in one of 23 family care teams across the province that are currently in development.
He’s spent countless hours and thousands in legal fees for the past year trying to understand why he has not received this money.
“I have 10 years of post-secondary education and many physicians actually have more years. And that’s expensive. Many physicians have hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. I was quite eager to avail of these bonuses and make a dent in my student loans,” said Patterson.
He has inquired several times with NLHS and government regarding the bonuses but keeps getting sporadic, mixed messages from the health authority that say he is not classified as a full-time physician with the family care team because of his time in the emergency room and hospital.
“The same people who are denying me these incentives are the same people that are asking me to cover in the hospital when needed. I can only be in one place at a time. And sometimes you have to make the decision where it’s most important to be during the day,” he said.
“I’m very confused as to why this is causing such a headache.”
Patterson said he is often required to be in the hospital because of doctor shortages in the area. His contract lists all his duties as a full-time physician who serves emergency, chemotherapy and the operating room.
He said he will fulfill his contract, but he is ready to leave the province and find a better paying job in another province.
Patterson said NLHS advised him not to not speak to the media about his situation. He felt exhausted and desperate and decided to speak out anyway.
After multiple requests for information and interviews, NLHS did not get back to CBC News by publication time.
Patterson’s predicament is all too familiar to Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association president Cynthia Slade, who says the government’s recruitment and retention efforts are failing, especially since the departments combined under one authority.
Cynthia Slade said she regularly hears from doctors who haven’t received their promised bonus and who can’t even find the right people to contact to inquire about it.
“It really speaks to the fact that we really need a more streamline recruitment and retention service here that we do not have right now,” said Slade.
While campaigning this past fall, the Liberal Party pushed its recruitment efforts and said since 2023 it recruited more than 160 doctors to the province.
Slade said those numbers do not accurately depict the number of doctors who have left.
“It’s one thing to attract them here, it’s another thing to keep them here. If people are meeting frustrations and beating their head against a wall, they are not going to stay,” she said.
“If they do not feel valued, if they don’t feel respected, if they don’t feel like they are wanted, they are not going to stay.”
Slade said rural areas of the province are at risk of falling apart if more and more doctors leave.
At his family care clinic in Stephenville, Patterson said four physicians have resigned in the past three months.
“We are down everywhere in the province and that is well known amongst the community. I think people should be questioning why people are leaving the province,” Patterson said.
At this point, he is looking for an apology from the health authority and the cash incentives he was promised, but he doesn’t expect either to come through.
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