CBRM groups seek help recruiting, retaining health-care workers

The Cape Breton Partnership and Cape Breton Regional Chamber of Commerce are creating a committee to recruit and retain doctors and nurses in the area.

Chamber CEO Kathleen Yurchesyn said the business organizations need people from across the regional municipality to participate. Organizers are also hoping to find a youth member.

"Youth is a big part of the conversation," she said. "We're looking to retain youth within our community and mitigate out-migration and make sure we have a community that people want to not only move to but stay in, as well."

The committee is expected to have representatives from the North Sydney area, Glace Bay area, New Waterford area and Sydney-Mira-Louisbourg.

Yurchesyn said the committee will get support from the Cape Breton regional hospital and the hospital foundation, as well as Nova Scotia Health.

How the committee members will do their job is still to be determined.

"We're working through the question of what will they have to do," she said.

People can sign up online

"We're really going to look to them and to other people around the table, the other supporting organizations, to really determine that over the next number of months.

"We haven't really dug deep into that, because we don't want to get into those conversations until we make sure that those community members that we're looking for ... are around that table to have those conversations."

Yurchesyn said other communities have successfully attracted and kept health-care professionals and CBRM is hoping to do the same.

She said anyone willing to help out can sign up online by April 17 to be considered, or contact the partnership or the chamber for details.

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