Where Are Our Medical Residents Working? Practice Locations of Physicians Who Did Their Medical Residency Through Memorial University of Newfoundland

Lead Researcher and Department
Dr. Maria Mathews, Dept of Community Health and Humanities, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University

Summary
The Medical School at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) was established to lessen the province’s reliance on medical schools elsewhere in Canada and abroad for its doctors. Since it began providing post-graduate training for doctors in the late 1960s, the program has turned out more then 3,000 medical residents. However, no studies have looked at how many of these doctors are practicing in Canada generally and NL in particular.

We wanted to determine whether doctors who do their residency training at MUN go on to establish practices in NL and identify those factors that influence residents’ decisions about where they locate.

We linked information from MUN’s Faculty of Medicine class list, alumni database, and post-graduate database with Southam Medical Database, which lists physicians’ practice location. We included all MUN medical residents who started their post-grad training by 1998.

We found the residency program at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) is making a major contribution to meeting the health care needs of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL). Nearly 60% of all fully licensed doctors practicing in the province in 2004 did their post-graduate training at MUN, including one-quarter of those serving NL’s rural communities.

Although MUN’s residency program is doing a good job attracting international medical graduates (IMGs), few of these doctors set up practice in NL.

Dates
1998

Keywords
Physician Retention, Medical Graduates, International Medical Graduates, Residency Program

Locations
Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
St. John's
Avalon Peninsula

Industry Sectors
Health Care and Social Assistance
Health Research and Development Laboratories (Professional, Scientific and Technical Services — Scientific Research and Development Services — Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering and Life Sciences)

Thematic Categories
Physicians (Health)
Rural Health (Health)

Departments
Faculty of Medicine (STJ)