Doctors in the house

He said within the past month, there have been a number of doctors recruited in Grand Falls-Windsor and are already practicing in the community.

“We’re really pleased right now,” Dr. Zuckerman said. “We recently had four family practitioners arrive and have started practicing already. We are very excited about that, as well as a new Ob/Gyn (obstetrician gynecologist).”

Keith Short, Jared Butler, Steven Combden and Sarada Ravinuthala are new family practitioners and Jennifer Mercer is an obstetrician gynecologist (Ob/Gyn).

“Right now, we have at least one more family doctor coming, but those are the main people who have recently arrived,” Dr. Zuckerman said. “What it means for patients is that there is improved access to care. The family doctors that we’ve hired are accepting new patients. So we’re really excited about that. It now brings our compliment to 2 1/2 full-time employees for obstetrics and gynecology.”

The family practitioners are providing general practitioners work, while the new obstetrician gynecologist is providing obstetrical and gynecological care.

The Central Health region extends from Charlottetown in the east, Fogo Island in the north, Harbour Breton in the south to the Baie Verte Peninsula in the west.

Dr. Zuckerman said in the rural Exploits areas, Central Health has a full compliment of physicians.

“Right now, the things we are actively recruiting for are internal medicine and psychiatry,” Dr. Zuckerman said. “But our rural sites are at full compliments at this time.”

Three of the four new family practitioners in Grand Falls-Windsor are recent graduates from Memorial University and the fourth, Dr. Ravinuthala, is the wife of another physician in town. Dr. Mercer is also a recent graduate of Memorial University.

“We have a solid working relationship with Memorial University and that really helps us attract new physicians.” - Dr. Michael Zuckerman

“We have a solid working relationship with Memorial University and that really helps us attract new physicians,” Dr. Zuckerman said. “We have good partnerships with our physicians, with the community, and we try to establish these relationships in order to be successful in recruiting, and we’ve been successful in that regard.”

Dr. Zuckerman said a lot of time and energy goes into recruitment, that combined with the good working relationships is the reason for success.

“We will continue to work hard and continue to try to improve that and to continue to go forward and we think it’s really important to continue that in order to recruit great doctors to Central Health,” Dr. Zuckerman said.

“This is a great place to be in central Newfoundland. There are great schools, there are great people and it’s a great place to live, work (and) raise a family. The communities we have are outstanding. For me, personally as well, this is just absolutely great. We try to show that to our prospects and we’ve been successful in that regard.”

Dr. Zuckerman said Central Health is also doing well retaining doctors.

“We really encourage this as a place to live for the long term, so we make it comfortable for the doctors, we want their families to be comfortable so we’ve been having a lot of success,” he said. “A big part of recruitment is retention so we spend a lot of time on that as well.

“We will continue to build and work on improving the successes that we’ve having. We’re really pleased with this and we hope to continue to be pleased.”