New Brunswick is taking steps to increase the number of medical school seats located in the province.
Ten seats offered to New Brunswickers in Newfoundland and Labrador will be moving to Saint John, officials announced Monday.
Starting next fall, the seats at Memorial University in St. John’s, Nfld., will be relocated to Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick on the UNB Saint John campus.
Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour Minister Trevor Holder said the hope is to retain more graduates in the province.
“If students are trained outside of the province, it’s around 40 per cent retention to come back to New Brunswick, whereas it’s 60-plus here,” Holder told reporters following Monday’s announcement.
The changes will allow Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick to accept 40 New Brunswick students per year into their program.
Holder said relocating the seats back to New Brunswick will lead to financial savings for the province, though he did not have an exact figure.
“When we started at Memorial, I think it was around $50,000 per student. That went up to about $130,000 at the end of it,” he said.
The savings will be reinvested into additional medical seats in New Brunswick, along with new yet-to-be-announced funding.
Health Minister Bruce Fitch said the announcement is a step in the right direction in terms of securing more physicians for New Brunswickers.
Fitch said his government understands the importance of providing future physicians with the opportunity to train at home.
The minister said they are also working hard to ensure New Brunswickers can have faith in their healthcare system.
“Announcements like this today are some of the steps that we are taking and that work will continue on,” said Fitch.
Holder said discussions are taking place among the department, Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick and le Centre de formation médicale du Nouveau-Brunswick at l’Université de Moncton to create the additional seats.
New Brunswick provides funding for 70 medical students each year. That includes the 10 currently offered at Memorial University, and six others in Québec.
Holder would not say what the future of those Québec seats would be when speaking with reporters.
“All I’m gonna say is stay tuned,” he said.
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