A local volunteer organization whose mission is not only to entice medical professionals to choose Sundre to practise but also to settle in the community long-term has been recognized for its efforts.
The Sundre Health Professional Attraction and Retention Committee was among the recipients of the 2019 Rural Health Professions Action Plan (RhPAP) Rhapsody Awards. The Rhapsody Community Award recognizes a rural Alberta community that has developed innovative and collaborative approaches to successfully attract and retain health-care professionals in its area, reads a press release.
“A play on RhPAP’s name, the Rhapsody Awards are designed to recognize the individuals, teams and communities that make significant civic and health care contributions within rural Alberta. Nominations are evaluated by an awards selection committee composed of rural health professionals and community members from all regions of the province,” it reads.
Other winners were the Mayerthorpe Healthcare Centre Nursing Team and Pincher Creek Respiratory Therapist Team, who received the Rhapsody Health-care Heroes Award, as well as Dr. Deon Erasmus, from Provost, who earned the Rhapsody Physician Award.
Sundre’s attraction and retention committee, which is comprised of representation including both the health-care sector and the community at large, has overcome numerous hurdles to become a provincial leader, said the press release.
“Recognizing a potential physician shortage early in 2011, the committee moved quickly to attract and retain a large physician cohort in Sundre.”
Additionally, the organization conducts community and health provider engagement, maintaining a schedule of ongoing events such as RhPAP skills, professional appreciation and gala fundraising events, as well as conducting physician exit surveys to obtain greater insight.
Gerald Ingeveld, a member of the local organization and chair of the Sundre Hospital Futures Committee, which branched out from the recruitment and retention effort, hailed RhPAP — which he said has worked alongside the committee since it started — as instrumental in helping to develop a system to recruit and retain physicians.
“Now, they’re moving into all health professionals. They’ve changed their mandate to do that,” he said.
“They’ve been a great group for giving us support. So to be recognized by them is quite an honour.”
Ingeveld said Sundre’s health professional recruitment and retention group is among the busier and more enthusiastic organizations of its kind in the province, and added the committee’s efforts also involve seeking opportunities to improve local medical facilities.
The committee’s chair, Heidi Overguard, has been involved with the recruitment and retention efforts since it first started in 2011, and Ingeveld praised her unwavering commitment that endured even through the difficult ordeal of her mother Joanne Overguard’s death last year.
“This award is hers as much as anybody’s,” he said.
Keeping the committee’s efforts alive and well plays an important role in maintaining quality health-care services in the community, he said.
“You can never be done. As soon as you start to relax, people might think they’re not appreciated.”
Aside from recruiting and retaining health-care professionals, one of the committee’s ultimate goals is to work towards a new hospital. For that to happen, he said Sundre must first have a stable base of great physicians and staff as well as equipment that can all be transferred.
“We’re not going to get a new facility unless we have those things in place.”
RhPAP, which has been active since the 1990s, first launched to help fund temporary substitute doctors in communities where physicians rarely, if ever, got a day off, he said.
“So they would sponsor locums to come in so they could get a holiday, or perhaps take a course to keep skills up to date,” he said.
“That was how they started.”
When the former NDP government was elected, a review was done and RhPAP laid out a good plan to continue its efforts and even broaden its mandate to also include educational outreach initiatives, he said.
“We were the first community to do a skills day with high school kids.”
Similar health-care workshop engagements have been done with college students. But branching out to tap into younger, perhaps undecided high school students to potentially influence their future career paths into a medical field was a new approach, he said.
“There are fewer rural kids going into medical fields. These efforts change that.”
Ingeveld said the upcoming fourth annual Sundre Hospital Legacy Gala on November 9 is going to include a presentation of the committee’s Rhapsody Award.
