The Half-a-Million Dollar Band-Aid

So Bonavista has a problem, people will tell you. We don’t have enough doctors here. And for about a year the Hospital Emergency Room has been closing spontaneously. You have an emergency? Drive to Clarenville, ninety minutes each way. The hospital has one of those adjustable signs in the driveway that today reads “The Emergency is OPEN”.

Our young mayor has been boasting to USA papers of how Bonavista has a hospital that towns of a similar size (popn 3,500) in Newfoundland are envious of.

Right.

Meanwhile said mayor is lobbying the province for help in providing medical services in Bonavista.

About a month ago a deal was struck whereby Bonavista gets $500,000 of which $400,000 will be allocated to two doctors who undertake to practice here for two years. You get $100,000 at the start of your first year, and another $100,000 at the start of your second year.

Everyone except me is happy.

I am not happy because I grew up in a town much smaller than Bonavista, population 650 then, and now, and our school teachers were straight out of Training College and the doctors straight out of training, or in the case of overseas doctors, re-training courses.

I am cynical at times. I figure that we will get two medical graduates who will get to pay off their student loans within two years, and then can head off for the big city practices with no debt. Sweet Deal for them.

But their patients will get no continuity of knowledge, and after two years will have to start off afresh with yet-another-new-doctor.

The bribe scheme is a band-aid solution.

The real problem is NOT that we don’t have enough doctors.

The real problem is that no doctors want to work in Bonavista. Nor do optometrists, dentists, podiatrists and all others of that ilk.

The real problem is that while Bonavista is a great place to live, it is an awful place for professionals to work. "I am a young person who's trying to make a career in rural Newfoundland," she said. "I want to be here and I want to work here. But it's really discouraging when you have so many obstacles facing you that are preventing you from doing so."

I would not like to make a living here by setting up a computer training establishment.

Bonavista is not a nice place to work, and the proof is that if you go up the hill on highway 230, you will not see a line of cars, engines idling, each car with a doctor waiting for a chance to set up a practice here.

Ditto any other kind of professional.

Bonavista lacks the atmosphere to set up and nourish a professional business here.

But see also Business Development

Search