Moncton hospital suffering over French pharmacist shortage: official

A manager with New Brunswick's French health authority says Georges Dumont hospital in Moncton is dealing with a chronic shortage of French-speaking pharmacists, cutting pharmacy hours and services.

Edith Peters, pharmacy manager for the Beausejour Regional Health Authority, said finding French-speaking pharmacists is her biggest challenge.

All pharmacists at the hospital must be able to speak and write in French, she said. While there are 14 pharmacists on the hospital's team, Peters said the hospital needs 16 to function.

For the past four years, there's been a chronic shortage at the Georges Dumont hospital, she said, and that means services and hours have to be cut back.

Peters said the pharmacy is able to do little more than dispense medication safely, with little time for individual patient care and education or teamwork with doctors on special medication cases.

Only two French language universities in Canada offer pharmacy programs, the University of Montreal and Laval University. New Brunswick buys three seats for students from the province at each school every year.

Peters said six seats are not a large pool to draw on.

"We see it in retail as well as in hospitals, but for us to recruit somebody that does speak French, [seat shortage] makes it harder," she said.

"If they could purchase more seats in Quebec, that I think could help."

Michele Roussel of the New Brunswick Department of Health said buying more university seats is something the province is considering, but she said that's not the biggest challenge.

"Within the pharmacies in the hospital, you need to understand that their salary range, their benefits, are all under collective agreement whereas in the private sector, it's basically meeting supply and demand so if they need to pay you the moon, they'll offer you the moon."

Roussel said the province is looking at making better use of pharmacy assistants and technicians.

The province also offers a scholarship for pharmacy students in exchange for them agreeing to work in hospital pharmacies for two years.

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