New doctor in town

With the opportunity to set up his practice anywhere, Dr. Ramzy Abdel-Malik chose Niagara.

With the opportunity to set up his practice anywhere, Dr. Ramzy Abdel-Malik chose Niagara. Setting up in Niagara and obtaining privileges to the Niagara Health System made perfect sense to the general surgeon. He has family living close by. There is also the Niagara region’s natural beauty.

But most importantly the hospital had the first-class facilities he needs.

In particular, the Welland Site, where Dr. Malik performs his surgeries, has the available operating room time, the equipment and the highly trained staff to deliver his services. “It’s crucial to have an up-to-date forum to deliver life-saving and quality of life procedures to our population,” he says.

Dr. Malik isn’t the only newcomer to Niagara Health. Not by a long shot. In just the past few months, the hospital has added psychiatrist Dr. Janice Van Kampen and Dr. Nick Marchi, a family physician also trained in emergency medicine.

Over the past decade, Niagara Health has recruited more than 170 specialists to help deliver high-quality healthcare to our residents. For the most part, the new physicians have replaced those that have retired or moved to other hospitals. So there is an ongoing need to bring in new physicians. Getting those physicians here is the result of a lot of work.

A complex and competitive process

You may not give much thought to how the doctor treating you arrived at the Niagara Health System. You are probably more concerned about your diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. But getting the doctor here is something the hospital has to consider, and a major component of providing you quality care close to home is recruiting motivated and qualified physicians.

“…we have to ensure we have the hospital resources, such as sufficient operating room time and good technology, to retain them.”

Dr. Joanna Hope
Interim Chief of Staff

There is a stiff competition for physician services due to a shortage throughout the country. In fact, the competition for physicians is international.

Niagara Health has successfully recruited foreign-trained physicians, but the nature of recruitment is changing. When Niagara Health started recruiting in 2001, the priority was replacing doctors who were leaving Canada for the United States. In the early part of the decade, close to half of the physicians who joined Niagara Health were foreign-trained. Now, one-third of the new recruits are Canadian-trained physicians returning home. “It’s evolved over the decade,” says Joan Hatcher, Manager of Medical Affairs.

There is too much competition for physicians for the Niagara Health System to simply wait for physicians to walk through our doors. To bolster our efforts, Niagara Health has formed a partnership, says Interim Chief of Staff Dr. Joanna Hope. “Because of the international competition for a fixed resource, we are now working with Hamilton to do a combined recruiting drive for psychiatrists and also cardiologists,” she explains.

The hospital conducts an impact analysis to determine such things as the specialty the doctor brings to the hospital, the additional operating room time he or she requires and any equipment required. This analysis is vital to ensuring a long-lasting relationship. “These days, there is great difficulty in recruiting physicians from both inside and outside our borders, and once they’re here, we have to ensure we have the hospital resources, such as sufficient operating room time and good technology, to retain them,” Dr. Hope says.

Recruiting physicians that fit is also an important consideration. “Because we are a complex hospital system in a period of change, it’s doubly important that there be a good fit between the new specialists and our current doctors,” Dr. Hope says. “That collegiality is a key component to our selection process.”

Psychiatrist Dr. Janice Van Kampen opened her office in St. Catharines General in August after moving from Mississauga.

Two of our new specialists

When Dr. Janice Van Kampen moved from the Greater Toronto Area to Niagara in the summer to join her husband, Niagara Health was a beneficiary. She opened her practice, where she specializes in adult psychiatry, at St. Catharines General in mid-August.

Dr. Van Kampen had practised for eight years at the Humber River Regional Hospital. It was important for her to remain practising in a hospital setting rather than a private practice. “I feel a hospital setting gives you more collegiality with other professionals. You have a team of social workers and nurses to work with and that appeals to me … The work is more challenging because you typically have sicker patients, but you also have more resources,” she says.

Dr. Van Kampen is busy treating patients and acclimatizing to her new surroundings. “I think Niagara Region is a beautiful area. I’m looking forward to things. It’s a change but it’s a good change,” she says.

Dr. Malik was also attracted by Niagara’s picturesque beauty and climate. He opened his practice in Welland in August after several years working in Regina, Saskatchewan. But he stresses it wasn’t the surroundings that made him choose Niagara: it was the quality of the hospital. Niagara Health had the resources he needs to practice his surgical specialties.

While he is excited for the opportunity to bring his specialty to the area, he says things could always improve. Dr. Malik would like to see more endoscopic resources in the system so he can detect certain cancers earlier. He would also like to see patients become more active participants in their care. That means making healthier lifestyle choices and following through with advice they receive from their doctors.

“I see a lot of hard-working professionals in the hospital and a lot of money being spent to advance the current services we have. We have the ability to conduct all possible services that are conducted anywhere else. But success is everybody’s responsibility,” he says.

Also recruit hospitalists

Physician recruitment is a shared responsibility in the Niagara region, with the hospital focusing its efforts on recruiting specialists and municipalities concentrating on recruiting family physicians.

This split makes sense since only about 100 of Niagara’s approximately 600 family physicians care for their patients when they are in hospital. But the Niagara Health System has been hard at work helping to ease the shortage of family physicians too, recruiting 10 hospitalist physicians since 2005. Hospitalists are specialists that care for hospital patients who either don’t have a family doctor or whose doctor does not have hospital privileges.

Recruitment is an ongoing process. Our efforts—for hospitalists and other specialists—have been very successful to date. Joan believes greater success lies ahead because of both the contacts her office has developed over the years and the positive word of mouth the hospital has gained with physicians.

These efforts are an important component of delivering quality care close to home. «

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