BY NORM TOLLINSKY
Dr. Karen Booth was born and raised in Toronto, went to medical school at the U of T and did her residency in family medicine in Ottawa, but she and her husband chose to make their home in tiny Richard’s Landing on St. Joseph Island.
The Booths live on Lake Huron and have a sailboat, a canoe and a small fishing boat. Matthews Memorial Hospital and the St. Joseph Medical Clinic are 10 minutes away. There’s no commuting, no traffic and not even a traffic light in town. Booth bikes to work in summer and could cross-country ski in winter.
The Booths live on Lake Huron and have a sailboat, a canoe and a small fishing boat. Matthews Memorial Hospital and the St. Joseph Medical Clinic are 10 minutes away. There’s no commuting, no traffic and not even a traffic light in town. Booth bikes to work in summer and could cross-country ski in winter.
Booth experienced both worlds and decided early on that an urban practice wasn’t for her.
“I wouldn’t be happy working in an office all the time,” she said. “I knew that in medical school. I did a rotation at Toronto Western Hospital and then came up north and worked with a physician here. I thought about what I wanted out of life and it certainly wasn’t working in downtown Toronto.”
Booth, one of two doctors on the island, also works in the small emergency department at Matthews Memorial Hospital in Richard’s Landing and does the occasional shift in the ER at Sault Area Hospital.
She’s also a member of the Central Algoma Rural Physicians, a group of six family docs in Richard’s Landing, Bruce Mines and Thessalon, who consult with each other, socialize and do educational rounds.
Booth is no stranger to the north. Her mother is from Sault Ste. Marie, her grandfather had a place on the Island and Booth spent many a summer on St. Joe’s enjoying the rural lifestyle as a child. Following her residency, she trained in emergency medicine in Sudbury and spent five years as an ER doc at Sault Area Hospital before hanging up her shingle in Richards’s Landing this past May.
St. Joseph Island, population 2,000, is joined to the mainland by the Bernt Gilbertson Bridge.
“We’re only 40 minutes away from the Sault and close to great towns in northern Michigan, so if you want to take advantage of sports, theatre or restaurants, it’s an easy drive.”
There’s also a stronger sense of community in a small town.
“We feel more connected living here than we ever did in the Sault,” said Booth. “We know our neighbours, we go out to community events like pumpkin carving contests and luncheons, and there are a lot of things to do with our two-and-a-half year old daughter.”
Booth sums it up as “living the dream.”
Joining Booth in Richard’s Landing February 1 is Dr. Ian McKay. A graduate of Dalhousie University, McKay was practising in Halifax when he came across an advertisement for Richard’s Landing on the HealthForceOntario website earlier this year. He and his wife followed up with a community assessment over the Labour Day weekend, and liked what they saw,” said Sally Hagman, a physician recruiter for Huron North, which takes in the communities of Blind River, Thessalon, Bruce Mines and Richard’s Landing.
Thessalon
Hagman also scored another recent win with the recruitment of Dr. Frances Keating to Thessalon. A native of Sault Ste. Marie, Keating had been practising in the U.S. and wanted to come back to Canada, “so we laid out the red carpet and showed her what a great community we have.”
Community assessments, paid for by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, are great opportunities to make a good impression. Prior to a visit, Hagman sends the potential recruit a survey to flesh out an itinerary. In the case of Dr. McKay, whose wife is a high school French teacher, arrangements were made for a meet and greet at Central Algoma High School in nearby Desbarats. By coincidence, a French teacher there was about to go on maternity leave, creating a vacancy that coincided with the McKays’ arrival.
Hagman makes arrangements for potential recruits to tour the clinics and hospitals, meet the physicians, play a round of golf, go for a sail or a bush plane ride and check out the real estate market.
Physicians already practising in the community are Huron North’s best salespeople, said Hagman.
“When I’m talking to someone about coming to our community, they know I’m going to tell them how great it is, but it’s always better to talk to the docs themselves.”
Financial incentives offered by both the Ministry of Health and the individual communities play an important role in attracting family physicians to Huron North. Grants available through the Northern and Rural Recruitment and Retention Initiative vary depending on the community’s Rurality Index of Ontario score. Blind River’s score of 78, for example, qualifies physicians for a grant of $113,200 payable over a four-year period. Individual communities top that up with moving allowances, signing bonuses, free housing and perks ranging from free golf and cross-country skiing memberships to complimentary Internet service.
The Northern Ontario School of Medicine has had a huge impact on physician recruitment across Northern Ontario. Every medical student and resident on placement in communities along the North Shore is welcomed as a potential recruit. Blind River, for example, puts them up in a furnished apartment and makes sure there’s a fruit basket waiting for them.
“You want to make sure there’s a place for locums and medical students to make them feel comfortable, because they’re our best ambassadors,” said Hagman. “If they speak highly of us, they’ll tell others or they’ll come back themselves.”
Practising medicine in Northern and rural communities does have its drawbacks.
“We work a lot more in Northern Ontario than they do in southern Ontario,” said Booth. “Our patient loads are higher, people are sicker and you don’t have as much support.”
However, the pluses, including fabulous sunsets, windsurfing at your doorstep, close-knit communities and the challenges associated with rural practice more than make up for it.
www.huronnorth.com
