Doctors flock to Kuujjuaq’s hospital

Why is Dr. Nathalie Boulanger, director of medicine for the Tulattavik hospital in Kuujjuaq, smiling? It’s because the 25-bed hospital is fully staffed with a team of doctors who live in the community— a situation that’s rare in northern hospitals and health care centres. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

KUUJJUAQ — If you ask Dr. Nathalie Boulanger, director of medicine at Kuujjuaq’s Tulattavik hospital, why four newly-graduated doctors decided to move full-time to Kuujjuaq this September, her answer is short and sweet.

“There was a miracle,” said Boulanger, who has practiced in Kuujjuaq since 1991.

Four doctors, a man and three women, recently arrived in Kuujjuaq to practice in the hospital and to visit five outlying communities along Nunavik’s Ungava Bay coast.

“This is the first time in six years that we have a fully staffed hospital,” Boulanger said.

In addition to their duties in Kuujjuaq, the new doctors have each been assigned a community that they will visit once a month.

The doctors have different reasons behind their decision to come to Kuujjuaq: one had practiced for a short time in Chisasibi and Puvirnituq and liked the experience, convincing his spouse— also a doctor— to accompany him to Kuujjuaq; another simply wanted to come north.

A doctor, who had visited Iqaluit on medical evacuations, decided that Nunavik offered better working conditions than Nunavut.

Doctors who work full-time in Nunavik receive perks like 16 weeks of holiday, including 20 days a year for professional development, paid trips south for vacations and professional development, housing and a generous retention bonus.

The package is part of Quebec’s effort to supply medical services to its more remote regions like the Lower North Shore or Nunavik.

While the money allows doctors to pay off student loans or send cash back home, it’s not the lure of the cash that drew these young doctors to Kuujjuaq.

Money has never been the primary reason doctors come to Kuujjuaq, Boulanger said.

That’s because for years— even when more generous measures were put into place— it was impossible to build a new, permanent team of doctors in the community, she said.

The stable team that Boulanger had joined in the early 1990s dissolved about six years ago with the departure of five doctors who had lived in the community for years. Two years ago, Boulanger also began to split her time between Kuujjuaq and Montreal.

Meanwhile, other doctors came and went, leaving the hospital to rely on doctors who were there for periods of a week or two.

In addition to Boulanger, only one doctor now practicing in Kuujjuaq has more than a year’s full-time experience in the community.

Despite the full-staffing at Tulattavik, recruitment efforts continue: two young recent graduates from McGill University’s medical school came to Kuujjuaq this month, as part of their effort to see where they want to settle after they finish their residency.

Word-of-mouth played into their decision to come to Tulattavik, they said, because the hospital gained a good reputation among doctors.

But those years without stability in the medical staff did affect patient follow-up as cases bounced from one doctor to another, Boulanger said.

The hospital also had to cut out deliveries, sending pregnant women to Montreal— although now that’s something it’s trying to change now with the presence of a full-time midwife in Kuujjuaq.

For now, the new doctors are settling in, exploring Kuujjuaq and eager to see the communities they will regularly visit.

All told Nunatsiaq News that they also want to learn more about Inuit life and make new Inuit friends.