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June 28 story update: The College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC says in its new annual report that there are 11,841 professionally active doctors in 2015/16, up from 11,574 in the previous fiscal year. As of today, there are still about 650 job vacancies for physicians in BC.

BY PAMELA FAYERMAN

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Last week I wrote about the staggering number of physician vacancies – nearly 700 – in BC. Is it any wonder there are long waits for care?

When I saw the latest figures from Health Match BC, the provincial recruiting agency, I was immediately curious to know if things had changed from three years ago, whenI wrote this story about BCs shortage of 24 dermatologists. Dermatologists say higher fees paid in other provinces is a big part of the reason why such specialists don’t want to practice in BC.

And wouldn’t you know it, BC still has the very same number of vacancies for dermatologists. Delays in diagnosis and treatment of potentially lethal skin cancers are but one serious ramification of the shortage of such medical specialists.

Dr. Evert Tuyp is president of the Doctors of BC section of dermatology. For years, he’s been urging the government and UBC medical school to fix the dermatologist shortage problem, to no avail.

Here’s what he told me:

“The chart showing doctor shortages included locums (holiday relief positions)… If you remove the locums, today’s numbers change for general practitioners, from 443 to 347 (6% of total BC GPs); Emergency Medicine 32 to 30 (20%); Psychiatry 27 to 25 (20%); Pediatrics 28 to 21 (18%); Anesthesia 14 to 10 (10%). Dermatology remains unchanged at 24 (34%). The most telling statistic is how many years’ of UBC medical school graduates it would take to fill these positions. For GPs, that number is 2.1 years, for Emergency Medicine 2 years, for Psychiatry 1.5 years, for Pediatrics 1.2 years, for Anesthesia 1 year, for Internal Medicine under 1 year. For Dermatology, it would be 8 years of graduates since only 3 Dermatologists are trained each year at UBC. So clearly Dermatology has a crisis on its hands that is unparalleled in BC. All this while melanoma incidence is rising faster than just about every other type of cancer. As a public institution, UBC has been entrusted by the population of BC to supply the required mix of specialists to the province. It is failing. If it cannot train the needed numbers of Dermatologists, then BC should contract for other provinces to train our future Dermatologists.”