From handknit socks to rural experience, here are ideas for attracting doctors to small towns

Dr. Sarah Giles got hooked on rural medicine by spending a summer volunteering in the Northwest Territories.

Giles, who was still a student at the time, flew in and out of seven different communities, providing care "with the most amazing doctor ever."

"I thought to myself, 'This is real medicine. This is what I want to do,'" said the doctor, a former board member of the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada who now lives and works in Kenora, Ont.

As rural health-care facilities in Manitoba, Canada and across the country struggle to find staff to keep their services running, Giles and Dr. Sarah Newbery offered their insights on how they might overcome those problems.

Some small southwestern Manitoba communities, including Killarney, Hamiota and Glenboro, have resorted to paying tens of thousands of dollars to a recruiting firm for successfully finding doctors who will work in their communities for at least four years.

Giles said recruiting firms can help with the precarious situation in some areas, but "robbing Peter to pay Paul" isn't a long-term solution.

"I think everyone needs to understand that there's a very, very small pool of recruitable rural doctors," she said.

"It's horrendous, but I firmly believe that our health-care systems in rural communities are going to see much darker days before things improve."

The best way to find rural doctors who will stay is to have rural medical students, she said, but there's a lot working against that.

Medical schools are in cities, and the people most likely to attend them are affluent people from cities, she said.

Giles is originally from Toronto, but that experience in the Northwest Territories and years in rural areas doing locum work — filling in for other physicians — ended with her taking a permanent position in Kenora.

Helping less affluent people from rural areas attend university in return for rural service when they're doctors could help provide a long-term solution.

"If your community needs doctors, look at your high school students. Who of them could potentially be that rural doctor?"

If that's not an option, there are ways to make it easier for doctors to relocate, such as helping them find appropriate housing and child care, making sure demands aren't unrealistic and offering flexibility in how their practice is managed.