Two new family residency positions at Sarnia’s hospital are expected to launch in July 2025, Bluewater Health’s top doctor says.
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“We’re in the midst of trying to finalize all the rotations, education requirements, curriculum, who’s going to be teaching what, the various physicians that will be part of the various rotations,” said chief of staff Dr. Michel Haddad, calling it is a complex process at least six years in the making.
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“But it looks like things are coming together now,” he said.
Bluewater Health already has an agreement with the Schulich School of Medicine at Western University to take two family medicine residents per year at Charlotte Eleanor Englehart Hospital in Petrolia, he said, noting those students — as part of their two-year residency programs — also do specialty program training at Sarnia’s hospital.
Doubling the number via the new program in Sarnia with Schulich, helps to expose more family doctors in training to the Sarnia area “in hopes that one day they’ll come back again and practice here as well,” he said.
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Officials with local doctor recruitment group Blue Coast Primary Care have said Sarnia-Lambton is short more than 10 family doctors and a number plan to retire soon and will need to be replaced.
“I think it’s going to get worse of the next five years with retirements coming up, so I think (primary care is) a very strategic area to target,” Haddad said.
“Hopefully, we’ll get even more,” than the two planned residency spots, he said.
Also in partnership with Schulich, where Haddad is also regional academic director, Bluewater Health plans to launch a so-called Sarnia-8 program in September 2025.
This program would see third-year medical students spend the year at Bluewater Health, with clinical rotations throughout various departments at the hospital.
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Normally, students spend their time at university instead and visit hospitals for two or three weeks to see what it’s like in emergency medicine, palliative care or other disciplines, he said.
“But with Sarnia-8, those eight (students) will actually be Sarnia’s students to be here the whole year,” splitting time between different departments such as surgery, general medicine and others
“They’ll be living here and . . . seeing patients here and they’ll be part of the community in the hospital.”
More ministry funding is making that possible, he said, adding it’s another complex process that involves making sure learners have the right amenities and tools like computers from the hospital for their studies.
“I’m very excited that 2025 is going to be a big year for us to have that new phase of expansion,” Haddad said.
Bluewater Health had an emergency medicine residency program that ran for about three years, but stopped in in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and didn’t resume because there’s no need now for more emergency doctors, Haddad said.
“Interestingly, the ones we trained … every single one stayed here,” he said.
About a dozen medical students and residents are at Sarnia’s hospital at any given time for monthly placements in emergency medicine, family medicine, surgery, obstetrics and other areas, he said.
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