N.S. adds over a dozen specialist residency seats at Dalhousie medical school

The Nova Scotia government is spending about $1.5 million to bring 15 new specialist residency seats to Dalhousie’s medical school.

Health Minister Randy Delorey announced the funding Wednesday, adding that the new spaces would be in place by next July.

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Delorey said the expansion will bring the number of provincially funded specialist spaces to 65.

“Nova Scotia is the only province in the country adding new spaces to its family medicine and specialist residency program,” Delorey said in a news release Wednesday.

The new spaces include:

• Emergency medicine (two spaces)
• Core internal medicine (two spaces)
• General internal medicine (two spaces)
• Child and adolescent psychiatry (two spaces)
• Neurology (adult)
• Obstetrics and gynecology
• Critical care
• Geriatric psychiatry
• Palliative medicine
• Ear, nose and throat (head and neck surgery)
• Dermatology

Dr. Christine Short, chief of medicine at Dalhousie University, said the new residency opportunities will ensure a stable supply of physicians in communities across the province.

“We’re delighted to have these new positions where the capacity exists to train the next generation of practising physicians,” she said in a statement.

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Dalhousie University’s dean of medicine, Dr. David Anderson, believes the increase will have a “positive and sustained impact” on specialist shortages.

“This addition of 15 specialty residency positions is an exciting development we’ve been working to achieve for quite some time,” said Anderson.

“Training these additional physicians in communities across the province will help meet the immediate health-care needs of Nova Scotians.”

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The province says residents will spend one to five years training in their specialty and will do rotations in various locations across the province as they complete their residencies.