The St. Joseph's Hospital has taken a hit recently to their staffing through maternity leave, but now they face a much more permanent loss. Dr. Ahmad Sawwan, their specialist in Obstetrics & Gynecology, is leaving for a new opportunity. Sawwan has been in Estevan since 2017.

"We are definitely appreciative of his service and wish him well, but he is leaving the community and we've made arrangements to cover obstetrics with the other physicians in town who do obstetrics work and of course perform the C-sections," says Executive Director with the hospital Greg Hoffort.

Ahmad will continue to provide service until April 30th, and so the hospital has already put into place to account for the loss of one of the two doctors in town capable of a C-section operation.

"We're doing that with local physicians and a part-time physician from Regina who is with us on a regular basis and some locums until we put a permanent solution in place. So we have one full-time physician remaining who does that, a part-time, and some locums to help us bridge the gap here."

It's a problem that's affecting many hospitals across the province, a shortage of doctors due to a lack of young adults making their way into the medical field, making recruitment of new doctors all the more taxing.

"We're proactive about it where we can be. There's physician shortages and when it comes to the specialties they're a little more serious across the country and that's part of the issue we find our self in. It's not just us looking for physicians, there's facilities right across the country that are in the same boat and so there is options for portability. "

When it comes to being proactive, St. Joseph's Hospital is working to start an interest in the medical field early. They have programs for teenagers and students who are considering a career in the medical field to get a little experience.

"As far as to encourage young students that may be still in high school or beyond, we do work placements here, we continually have students with different aspirations in health care that'll come in and shadow different professions whether it's lab or x-ray or physicians. We offer incentives for students interested in different fields and we're in need."

Hoffort adds that despite the difficulty and time consumed through medicals school, the hospital is happy to offer their incentives.

"There's different things we do but it's difficult as a high school student to start offering bursaries because prior to medical school there's four years of university and then the onerous task of getting into medical school, so there's no certainty that medical school is an option for everyone, but certainly we're very supportive of young physicians and if local students were accepted to medical school we'd be very happy to work with them and offer incentives to help them through that."