City offering bursaries to recruit doctors to the region

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The city is hoping to alleviate its struggles with recruiting and retaining doctors by offering incentives to medical students who pledge to practise in the area after finishing their studies.

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City council agreed Monday night to allocate $10,000 to two bursaries through the New Brunswick Medical Education Foundation to entice medical students from the capital region to come home and practice for at least one year.

The funding comes from the province and was distributed to the city by the Capital Region Service Commission for physician recruitment and retention initiatives.

Economic developer Laurie Guthrie said the move comes as a recent Fredericton Chamber of Commerce membership survey identified primary care access as members’ top concern and the biggest barrier to workforce attraction.

It also comes after New Brunswick Health Council numbers show 62,000 people in the Fredericton health zone lacked a family doctor in 2023.

An estimated 68 per cent of patients in the Fredericton health zone have a primary-care provider, according to the health council’s count, compared to 86 per cent in the Saint John zone and 95 per cent in the Miramichi region.

Of the region’s 106 active family physicians, 48 are aged 50 or older.

“This is a great initiative,” Coun. Eric Megarity said of the bursaries. “We need help attracting and keeping physicians.

“When you look at the figures (for primary care access), someone needs to look at that and say: ‘What’s going on? Why can we not attract and keep doctors in our zone?’ It’s a serious situation here in Fredericton.”

The funding follows a presentation at a July committee meeting from Alyssa Long, the medical education foundation’s executive director, saying the foundation hopes to support aspiring health workers in the Fredericton area. Her group was created by physicians in 2010 and raises money to support student scholarships and funds med students from the province, committing them to eventually return and work in New Brunswick.

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In 2024, more than $1.1 million was presented to 144 students, according to the foundation’s website.

The move also comes as Statistics Canada reported the Fredericton census metropolitan area was among the 10 fastest-growing areas between 2022 and 2023, with the population jumping by 4,543, or 3.96 per cent, to 119,059 in that span.

Meanwhile, the city’s population under the pre-annexation boundaries had reached 69,406 people in 2023, up by 2,878 (4.3 per cent) from the previous year. That’s more than triple the projections in the city’s growth strategy from 2017.

With municipal support, the medical education foundation already offers bursaries with “return-to-service” agreements to up-and-coming doctors in Dieppe, Riverview, Bathurst, Rothesay, Hampton, Quispamsis, and Tantramar, according to a staff report presented to council.

Bursary applications will be open province-wide from March 1 to May 31.

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