By Jim Brown
jim@peicanada.com

Health PEI is in negotiations with two doctors (one male, one female) in the PEI Family Medicine Residency Program and things look encouraging so far for their full-time relocation to West Prince by sometime in July.

That’s the word from Health PEI’s director of primary care networks and chronic disease prevention, Marilyn Barrett.

There is a constant flow of doctors in and out of West Prince, but the area has managed to maintain its full, recommended complement of 12.

Health PEI will not recruit above that level.

Ms Barrett said there were six doctors in the residency program.

She also said West Prince is in the best shape of the entire province when it comes to its physician complement.

In the meantime Dr Baldev Sethi, based in the Tignish Co-op Health Centre, announced he was retiring in late April after serving 37 years in West Prince. 

Another West Prince doctor is also considering retirement, said Ms Barrett.

She went on to say she hopes the two new doctors, if they accept work in West Prince, will assume shifts at the O’Leary Health Centre walk-in clinic, which has experienced nine closures in 2011 due to insufficient staff coverage and another two so far this year, with other days at risk in February.