New president of Doctors N.S. commits to doing more to address racism in health care

The new president of Doctors Nova Scotia says tackling the racism that's directed at doctors and patients in the province is one of her priorities in the year ahead.  

Dr. Heather Johnson is a family doctor in Bridgewater and medical site lead for the South Shore Regional Hospital who has served on the group's board of directors in the past.

"We know that people have been subjected to bullying and racism and misogyny and all kinds of things that have made it difficult for them to feel comfortable in the health-care system," Johnson told CBC Radio's Information Morning on Tuesday.

"We need to work on education. We need to look at our practices. We need to think about how we deal with issues that arise when racism is a problem. We have to be comfortable talking about it."

Johnson's one-year term as president began over the weekend. Her conversation with host Portia Clark has been edited for clarity and length. 

Congratulations. You have been preparing for this role for a year. How does it feel to add this to your other leadership roles? 

It's pretty exciting. Lots of opportunities are coming this year, I'm sure. 

And one of them will be figuring out how virtual appointments will work. Where do things stand in negotiating that and maybe making it permanent?

Currently we're in discussion about what that's going to look like going forward. We believe it's an essential tool in our tool belt to provide the best care for the people of Nova Scotia. Not all visits can be virtual. Lots of face-to-face visits still need to occur, but it is a great option for some things. It's good for patients who just want a quick contact with their doctor. It's good for unusual scheduling times when people are other places and they can't get to the office. 

And it also gives us the opportunity to think about what secure messaging might look like. So if you have a question, you can send it to me on a secure messaging system and then I can respond to that when I get a chance, and we can have communication back and forth. There's all kinds of things we can do to modernize how patients connect with us. 

It sounds like you'd like the system that's in place right now to stick around with the addition of secure messaging?

That would be great. But these are all the things that we have to talk about. We have to find a balance for how we're going to deliver care to patients, and we have to come up with a plan that seems sensible for patients and that they can access easily. 

What might be the hurdles to making this permanent? Is there any resistance on the part of the province? 

The province needs to be accountable to the people of Nova Scotia so they have to make sure that this is a system that's accessible to all people and that it has to be simple, and that people can still get the care they need when and where they need it. That's the discussion that's ongoing. 

Are there other things, Dr. Johnson, that have changed during the pandemic that you'd like to see remain? 

You know, the number of times that people wash their hands really makes me happy … The number of colds that we didn't see this winter, all of those kinds of public health measures they've been great ... And the vaccine program is obviously a great step forward in the management of the pandemic, so that rollout has been going really well in Nova Scotia so far. 

There are still a lot of people, about 65,000 Nova Scotians, who don't have a family doctor. With many doctors set to retire, the constraints of recruiting during the pandemic, how is that going to move forward and how do we make a significant dent in that? 

I believe the only way we're going to make a significant dent in that is if we actually work with our partners. We bring knowledge about how doctors want to work to the table. Department of Health brings lots of ideas about how we can get people to the province. Nova Scotia Health is involved in lots of the clinics and lots of the hospital environments that physicians work in. So if we come together, I think we have the people in Nova Scotia that can help solve this problem. To move forward, it has to be a team effort. 

Have you seen anything that has worked especially well, though? I mean, it just seems like this is a perennial issue and in fact, the numbers on the wait lists are growing. 

One of the things that I have noticed locally that's been working really well is partnering with community, so having community members be part of that recruitment effort, trying to integrate people into the community early rather than saying, 'Oh, thanks for coming, here's your job, start work.' But saying, 'You know, let me help you with housing. Let me help you figure out what your family needs for school. What does your partner do for a job?' So those community connections are really important and connections with colleagues, so working to have that connection early so people don't feel isolated when they start practice.

That brings me to increasing equity and diversity, which is also on your radar, helping people feel welcomed … Have you seen that or jump-started those conversations yourself in your own practice and work environment there on the South Shore? 

We've been trying. We're making inroads, trying to talk to people about what can we do differently. How can we make this environment better for you? And going to people and communities that feel like they're marginalized and asking them where it went wrong for them, and trying to make changes within the system. 

And might that also factor into the recruitment campaign? 

Absolutely. We have a lot of international medical graduates in Nova Scotia, so if we can be a safe work environment, that's a good way to talk to international medical graduates who may be coming here and maybe trying to fit into a workplace where they feel like they're not the same as everybody else. And we need to make a culture where that doesn't matter, where we can be more welcoming.