The only doctor in a small town south of Edmonton has left, just six months after opening a practice in the community.
The difficulty of hiring physicians in smaller towns is not a new issue — but it’s one that the roughly 2,000 residents in Millet, Alta., are experiencing.
“They’re mad. Someone has posted on our Facebook page claiming it was a waste of people’s time because he was only here for so long,” said nurse Diana Bruun.
Bruun owns the administrative side of the Millet Medical Clinic, which is now closed indefinitely until a new doctor can be found.
“It’s really heartbreaking to tell these people,” she said.
“We are exhausting all avenues to bring in a new doctor.”
Faisol Ferdous opened the only pharmacy in the town, which is about 40 kilometres south of Edmonton, four years ago.
“I wanted to give a service to this town … a lot of people asked me why not Edmonton?” he said.
“I love them. That’s it.”
He thought it would be great to bring a doctor to the town and offered free rent in the building. After a three-year hunt, ending in March of this year, a doctor came to Millet from Leduc.
“There are a lot of old patients here, poor people who don’t work or have vehicles so it’s really difficult for them to go and see a doctor.”
He said he was passionate about bringing a doctor to Millet because he saw the demand — he even expanded the hours of his pharmacy to seven days a week because to him, “no one is here to help.”
Though he would write prescriptions for certain issues, he said “bigger problems need more assessment and a doctor for proper diagnoses.”
Mayor Doug Peel said locals were ecstatic and now “they’re a little bit disappointed that he’s gone.”
“Until this doctor showed up six months ago … it’s been almost 20 years.”
The doctor’s departure was due to personal concerns, according to Bruun.
She said the closure will leave a big hole in the community and it’s an example of the challenges of accessing health care in rural communities.
“The system is just failing so many people by not having our clinic open,” Bruun said.
Bruun said often patients are going to nearby emergency departments when clinic care would be more appropriate and patients will most likely be travelling to Leduc or Wetaskiwin for their medical care.
In a statement, the provincial Ministry of Primary and Preventative Health Services said that strengthening rural health care is a priority and the government continues to recruit more physicians.
The ministry highlighted several programs to help access health, including a rural and remote family medicine resident physician bursary program and supports like the Nurse Practitioner Primary Care program.
“Recruiting physicians to smaller communities has historically been challenging across Canada. While the government does not dictate where doctors practise, overall growth, combined with rural-focused initiatives, is helping increase supply in communities like Millet,” reads the statement sent Wednesday.
To Richard Martin, a family doctor in Grande Prairie, a welcoming community is the most important part of retaining doctors in rural communities, but says there are stressors that come from working alone or in a small team.
“Feeling responsible essentially full time, [it’s] a hard burden of responsibility to carry continuously,” he said.
But he added that patients can face their own burden when doctors choose to leave smaller communities.
“In spaces where there are a lack of health providers, unfortunately, it becomes the patient and the family that receive the burden of responsibility for trying to navigate this problem,” he said.
He added that health outcomes worsen as “patients need to leave their location in order to receive health services,” and that closure of rural clinics is “a problem which is not unique” to Millet.
Bruun is still hopeful that a doctor will come and stay in the community she loves.
“I want to be able to provide the service for the people who want to be able to stay in their homes for as long as possible, and keep the community healthy.”
