Kincardine Council has been introduced to the municipality’s new Physician Recruitment and Retention Coordinator.
Margo Eno, a longtime staff member at the local medical clinic, is taking over from Lynn Boss.
Eno says the main challenge for her taking on the position is getting prospective doctors to simply visit Kincardine and look at the community.
She says once they come and see the community, there’s a good possibility they’ll decide to stay.
Eno says most new graduates want to specialize and work in large cities, instead of practising in small towns and rural areas.
Eno says she shows doctors visiting Kincardine the entire municipality, along with Huron-Kinloss and locations that make it a good place to raise a family.
Eno says it’s the best she can do by showing them where she herself has raised her family over the past 32 years.
Eno says they need to have new doctors in place for whenever any of Kincardine’s doctors who are nearing the end of their careers decide to retire so that so-called “orphan patients”—people left without a doctor, have someone to go to.
Kincardine lost two doctors in 2008, but another one has since moved to the community.
A new doctor is needed who can provide anesthesia services at the hospital.
Kincardine is relying on help from the Health Force Ontario section of the Ministry of Health to ensure doctors from other communities can come in and fill Emergency Department shifts at the hospital.
Mayor Larry Kraemer welcomes Margo Eno into her new role.
He hopes she can “dig us out half a dozen doctors right away,” and is pleased there has been a smooth succession in keeping the job of recruiting new doctors in Kincardine filled.
Kraemer says he’s a bit dismayed that there are now six to seven thousand people without a doctor in the municipality, and that efforts to bring in new doctors always seem to feel like “one step forward and two steps back.”
Doctor recruitment in Kincardine is run by the local physician’s group and funded by the municipalities of Kincardine and Huron-Kinloss.
