Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just different set of questions. I wanted to follow up. I heard the Minister of Health and Social Services say that we have a 40 percent vacancy rate amongst our doctors which, you know, nobody's happy with that percentage; I'm sure we all agree on that. I just want to know one of the paths to increasing that is to make sure we are training and growing our own doctors and making sure we do have the capacity to take on medical resident students. I'm hoping the Minister of health could update this House how many residencies we presently have. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is a real health success story. The NWT Family Medical Residency Program was launched in connection with the University of Alberta in July of 2020 as a way to train and retain potential candidates for family doctor positions within the NWT. So the first two residents started the program in 2020. Then two more were added in 2021 for a total of four. In 2022, two more were added and two graduated. And this year two more will be added, and two will graduate. So it's a twoyear program with two residents in each year.
So I also want to say that this same group, Practice NWT, will be supporting the University of Alberta North of 60 Medical Student Northern Medicine Weekend where 14 medical students will come to Yellowknife to learn about the opportunities available to them here. And they will be doing presentations and job shadows at Stanton Territorial Hospital to find out what we have to offer and see whether it meets their career aspirations. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm attempted to ask whether we can just give all 14 of those students a contract as soon as they get off the plane. But my understanding is that currently med schools, they're nowhere near graduating enough doctors to fill the demand and the reason they won't let more students in is because there's not enough residencies. So there's this kind of fight going on between the med schools and the provinces and territories. So I just want to make sure we're doing our part to grow the residencies. Are there any plans to expand residency further? I heard the Minister say we got these two each additional year for family medicine. But there's a lot of specialties and there's kind of an insatiable demand on both sides for residencies and doctors. So is there any further plans to expand our residencies? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it's true the family residency program is just one. We don't have any other formal programs. But medical residents do come to the NWT from time to time to study there. The limitations on this program are funding. And the ability of resident doctors to provide preceptor or mentorship to the residents. So where we have such a high vacancy rate at the moment, that really is a limiting factor for how many residents we can take at this time. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.
