Army wants medical recruits
Attention, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and technicians — your country needs 300 of you
Jun. 23, 2006. 05:08 AM
TANYA TALAGA
HEALTH REPORTER
The Canadian Forces are hunting for nearly 300 medical personnel to serve at home, overseas and to staff the coalition hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and they're hoping lucrative signing bonuses will help bring in some new recruits.
The Forces desperately need to recruit about 43 doctors, 33 nurses, 20 pharmacists and a host of others, including medical and dental technicians.
Military officials are aware the recruitment drive is happening at the same time provinces are crying out for more doctors. While they'd prefer full-time staff, the Forces are keen to accept reservists and medical university students.
The Forces traditionally have had a chronic shortage of medical workers but it has become worse in recent years, said Commodore Margaret Kavanagh, commander of the Canadian Forces health services group.
"We need just about everything there is out there," she said. "We need physicians, pharmacists, medical technicians, X-ray lab, diagnostics, bio-medical equipment technicians. You name it, we need it."
Emergency room, mental health and critical-care nurses who can handle severely ill patients are desperately needed. "The specialist nurses are who we are really short of," Kavanagh said.
To help lure physicians, the Forces already offer signing bonuses to family doctors and specialists up to $225,000 for four years of service, although it is taxable. Now the military is considering extending bonuses to some other medical workers.
Next week, Canadian Medical Association officials will meet the chief of defence staff to discuss strategies on how to address the shortage, said association president Dr. Ruth Collins-Nakai.
"With the prolongation of the mission in Afghanistan, plus humanitarian needs ... and the routine care of the troops required here in Canada, there's a need to recruit more doctors and nurses to the military or at least to work with the military," said Collins-Nakai.
The Canadian government has extended its troop commitment to Afghanistan until 2009.
Collins-Nakai isn't worried the Forces are competing with the rest of the country for doctors. "We want to support our colleagues," she said. "Oftentimes, they can work in both systems. The doctors in reserves work in the Canadian health system and when there is need they serve on deployment in the military."
The experiences health-care workers have on deployment are incredibly useful, she said. "Orthopedic surgeons, general surgeons, intensive care (doctors), those types of experiences are valuable to have," she said.
Kavanagh understands Canada needs more medical personnel. In Ontario, roughly one in 10 people is without a family doctor and a report released this week shows the number of family physicians accepting new patients is at an all-time low.
"It's a very competitive market out there," said Kavanagh. "We are competing with Canada's health-care system for the same people."
To make themselves a more attractive employer, the Forces have offered lucrative signing bonuses for the past few years. Doctors who sign up for four years of service receive $225,000, and those who sign up for two years can get $80,000 with the option of getting another $100,000 if they decide to sign up for two more.
"Civilian" physicians who enter into the military with four years of general-duty experience can make $137,097 and as much as $226,425 if they make it to the rank of colonel. The starting salary for specialists is $186,852 for a major and increases annually according to experience and rank up to $258,312 for a colonel.
"We are very interested in the mid-career specialists who may have done 20 years of family practice and are looking for a change," Kavanagh said. "We've attracted quite a few of those in recent years."
At the moment, dentists need not apply. "We're okay for dentists," she said. But dental hygienists, oral and maxillofacial surgeons are in demand.
To help attract pharmacists and technicians capable of maintaining and operating high-tech diagnostic tools, Kavanagh said the military is working on signing bonuses for them as well.
"We are short 50 per cent of the pharmacists we need. The role of pharmacists is not just what you see happening in Shoppers Drug Mart. They manage our equipment. They co-ordinate all our supplies in and out of theatre. They handle some of our other medications and vaccinations we use to protect our soldiers that you might not use in the civilian environment."
While full-time medical staff is needed , Kavanagh said the military can manage with part-time personnel and reservists.
To attract medical students, they'll pay for tuition and books as well as a salary of around $45,000 in return for four years of service. When they graduate, students will get a signing bonus of $40,000 to $80,000.
Men and women who can fix high-tech medical equipment are also in need. The Kandahar hospital has a 16-slice CT scanner and dust is an issue in Afghanistan. "The more high-tech you get, difficult environments can ruin equipment," Kavanagh said.
The Forces have put out recruitment ads in medical journals, attended job fairs and are trying to get more aggressive in their recruitment drive.
"We need to reach out to people and say we are here and we are an option," she said.
