April 28, 2005
PRINCE GEORGE – Premier Gordon Campbell announced today that a BC Liberal government will create an additional 128 doctor spaces across the province – 32 at the University of Northern BC, 32 at the University of Victoria, and 64 more at the University of British Columbia.
“Most medical school graduates end up practicing close to where they have trained. Our new medical schools and new training spaces in Prince George, in Victoria, and in Kelowna are going to have long-lasting benefits for the North, for the Island, for the Interior, and for the entire province,” said Campbell. “We are making real progress in our health care system. We are building on the first-rate system that already exists and we are going to make sure the tools are there to make the system even stronger.”
With those additional spaces, the UNBC program will graduate a total of 32 new doctors each and every year, a potential increase of close to eight per cent a year to the approximately 400 physicians practicing in the North. That will come on top of any physicians recruited to the region – something that has already had a lot of success in Prince George with 25 physicians brought in from 2002 to the end of 2004 – a 20 per cent increase that brought the number of doctors to 150.
The new first-year spaces will open in 2007 and cost $9 million a year to operate. There are no additional capital costs because BC’s new and expanded medical campuses were designed to accommodate expanded capacity.
“Since 2001, we’ve laid out the plan to almost double the number of doctors trained in B.C. Today I’m telling you that we’re going to build on that. We’re moving forward on our second Great Goal of leading the way in North America in healthy living and physical fitness,” said Campbell. “Not one new medical school space was added under the NDP. We are doubling the number of MDs trained in B.C. That’s real progress.”
The BC Liberal government’s plan so far has already added new medical school campuses in Prince George and Victoria, and expanded the UBC campus in Vancouver. The plan announced today will also create the space for eight new graduates at UVic and 16 grads at UBC. As students move through the second, third, and fourth years of their programs at UNBC, UVic, and UBC, a total of 128 new spaces will be created. When combined with the new seats at the UBC-Okanagan medical school campus announced by Premier Campbell last week, the BC Liberals have laid out new plans to create at least 248 new doctor training spaces.
With the completion of the new spaces announced in the past week, there will be 1,144 doctors in training at any one time in BC – up more than 140 per cent from the 480 training spots that existed under the NDP.
B.C. now has one of Canada’s highest rates of doctors per capita. The Canadian Institute for Health Information reported B.C. attracted more family physicians and specialists from across Canada than any other province in 2003. In our first two years, the number of B.C. physicians grew from 8,105 to 8,348.
The BC Liberals also created B.C.’s first-ever programs to train nurse practitioners at UBC and UVic, with the first class graduating this year. UNBC is going to play a key role in increasing the number of nurse practitioners graduating in the province with their new training program starting this September. It will graduate 15 nurse practitioners a year.
“Our vision for patients and for health care is clear,” said Campbell. “Our strong economy and surplus budget have given us the power to create more medical training seats, to build new medical schools, and to move forward with better health care for people in every region of British Columbia.”
