Medical Scholarships Attract Students Passionate About Practicing In N.B.
Jeremy Thomas Slayter was so inspired by his first experience in the province’s healthcare system at the Stan Cassidy Centre for Rehabilitation in Fredericton, he decided to pursue a career in medicine in New Brunswick.
“I don’t intend on leaving and I believe it’s important to stay here in the community, and province, that I grew up in,” says the Quispamsis native and first-year student at the Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick school in Saint John.
Dr. Karine Bouchard is from Baker Brook, a village 30 minutes outside Edmundston, and she returned to the region after studying medicine at the Universite de Moncton, which has a joint program with the Universite de Sherbrook. Edmundston needs more doctors, she says, so residents appreciate doctors who come back to the area to practice.
“It was always the plan for me to return,” said Bouchard, a general practitioner at the Edmunston Regional Hospital. “People are really grateful for that.”
Bouchard says the region could use as many as 15 more doctors.
The province faces a chronic shortage of doctors, with nearly 40,000 residents across the province without a family physician. But there is reason to believe it can close the gap with help of the New Brunswick Medical Education Foundation (NBMEDED), which has no shortage of people like Slayter and Bouchard, both applying for funding and passionate about practicing here after completing their medical education.
NBMEDED, launched in 2010 by Dr. Donald Craig, has since become an important part of addressing the shortage, awarding 130 scholarships over the years and growing every year to meet the increasing demand. Last August it awarded 41 bursaries for a total of $303,000.
The foundation has more than $6-million invested to support bursaries, and a generous, but relatively small group of donors. It’s now looking for additional small and large donors to support more students year to year, and help bring down that waiting list.
The application process for the next round funding is also open until May 31.
Bouchard and Slayter are both scholarship recipients. Bouchard graduated in 2019 and says the funding was crucial for her.
“It was really important because I’m from a little village and my parents were not able to help me financially,” she said. “I was working on own to raise the money to go, so the foundation helped me a lot.”
Slayter says the foundation’s financial support is a demonstration of its commitment to keeping its new doctors at home in New Brunswick.
“There are pressures to leave the province, either for financial reasons or other opportunities, but having the foundation really does show that New Brunswick really does want physicians to stay, and they want New Brunswickers to stay.”
Slayter did summer research jobs at the Stan Cassidy centre that made him realize top-notch work was being done in the province.
“There is a lot of cutting-edge research happening in rehab that is able to really improve people’s quality of life,” he said. “Watching people go from being in a wheelchair to walking again, just to observe it is quite a phenomenal feeling.”
Slayter is also a natural networker and collaborator. It’s how he got his first job at Stan Cassidy, he says, and it also inspired him to help start the Atlantic Student Research Journal.
“A lot of what we did was connecting students to researchers and to career paths they were interested in.”
It’s also what he values about the NBMEDED, in addition to the financial assistance the foundation provides.
The foundation prides itself on connecting with students and introducing them to the benefits of living and working in the province.
Dr. Michael Simon, a board member and chair of the foundation’s alumni committee, says the scholarships themselves are important, but the personal, networking aspect is also critical.
“You have to get to the students early,” he says. “You have to build a relationship with them. You show them the positive aspects of working [here] with the great camaraderie with all the specialists and family doctors. And you show them all the things outside medicine, the rivers, the recreational activity, the quality of the people. Once you get them in here and they see all of that, you have a better chance to make them stay.”
Dr. Simon has done this kind of work informally for decades. Now he says the foundation can help formalize and implement that way of operating on a larger scale, connecting new doctors with new opportunities and communities throughout the province.
“I’ve been involved [with students and new doctors] like this for three decades, bringing them out to dinner, bringing them into my practice, and helping other groups bring their doctors in,” he says.
“When you get the medical community involved and then you get the business community involved, and the average person looking for family doctors, then you have everyone moving in the right direction. This foundation is an excellent manifestation of that.”
Slayter says he knows he can count on this network long after he graduates from school.
“It’s immensely valuable because there will be people I can turn to, people that have been there and have started practices and found their way through various challenges. They’ll be there to support me,” he says.
He says the supportive culture is characteristic of the foundation shares and the province generally.
“It’s something incredibly valuable that we have that many places don’t,” he says.
For more information on scholarship applying for a scholarship or to make donations to the New Brunswick Medical Education Foundation, call the office at 506-848-0036 or visit the foundation web site.
This story is the second in a series sponsored by the New Brunswick Medical Education Foundation (NBMEDED). Part one: