A new family medicine residency program for Thompson was announced on Tuesday.

 

It will give medical residents a chance to experience northern and remote health-care service delivery and encourage physician recruitment to under served areas of our health region.

 

Dr. Jose Francois, medical director of Shared Health’s family medicine program comments here.

 

“We’re going to start off with two residents per year and, over the next few years, look at expanding based on the experience.”

 

Francois also shared how the candidates are chosen for the residency program.

 

“We have a national selection process. We take applicants from across the country. We then interview and we make our rank-order list and then the candidates also put a rank-order list and there is a match process. We will see next week what our results are.”

 

Francois said similar residency programs began in Dauphin around 25 years ago and have been launched around the province ever since. He said the retention rate of doctors in the region where they’ve done their residency training has been around 75 per cent.

 

The residency program will begin here in Thompson this July.