Dalhousie medical school dean says CBU satellite campus will help address local needs

The dean of Dalhousie University's medical school in Halifax says training doctors at Cape Breton University will increase the pool of physicians in the province and should help ease the shortage on the island.

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston has said he wants a medical school open at CBU by 2025.

Dr. David Anderson said one of the aims is to train new doctors for the needs of patients in the communities where they're practising. 

"In Cape Breton, we are going to be focusing on family medicine and rural medicine as the areas that we want to have these students be particularly well developed [in] and we also know that when students train close to home, they're much more likely to stay at home to work and live," he told Information Morning Halifax.

Dalhousie, whose medical school is more than 150 years old, has operated a satellite campus for educating doctors in New Brunswick for more than a decade.

Anderson said CBU grads will have a medical degree from Dal and it will carry the same weight, just like those in New Brunswick.

"Every metric of performance shows that those students are doing every bit as well as students training in Halifax," he said.

In addition to family and rural medicine, doctors trained at CBU will also benefit by having a close connection to the Mi'kmaq through Unama'ki College on the Sydney campus, Anderson said.

"We recognize there's some unique opportunities with a large Indigenous population in Cape Breton and a very active Indigenous college within Cape Breton University."

Dalhousie has long provided a significant amount of medical training in Cape Breton, he said, with an active resident training program that goes back about 20 years and a newer program that sees some third-year students spend their entire year on the island.

"Many of the physicians in Cape Breton are graduates of this program and are now leading the training of the family doctors of tomorrow."

Anderson said there are some concerns about the capacity for local doctors to take on extra work training new physicians, but he said studies show one way to prevent burnout is to provide a diversity of opportunities that doctors can feel passionate about.

It's also crucial that the training not be added onto the end of a workday, but be scheduled in conjunction with the doctors themselves, he said.

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