added to the waitlist<\/a>. As of April 30, there were 34,621 people who remain on the list for a new family doctor or nurse practitioner, according to the patient registry website.\u00a0<\/p>\nWATCH | What does it take to convince a health-care professional to move to P.E.I?:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778423711_330_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
What does it take to convince a health-care professional to move to P.E.I.?<\/p>\n
Health P.E.I. says it has improved the way it recruits doctors and other health-care professionals to come and work in this province. CBC News: Compass host Louise Martin sat down with the agency\u2019s director of workforce recruitment, Dominick Desjardins, to find out what goes into enticing people to the Island. <\/p>\n
Although Desjardins leads workforce recruitment for Health P.E.I., he stressed that recruiters work collaboratively across Canada, often referring candidates to health authorities in other regions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are third-party recruitment firms that will find a candidate, will sell them, sell them, sell them and settle them. But once they\u2019re settled they can walk away,\u201d Desjardins said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe recognize that maybe an urban centre is what you\u2019re looking for, so maybe a rural community in P.E.I., you might not stay there.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘We’re consistently on the clock’<\/p>\n
Andrea McCorkell, a physician recruiter in White Rock, B.C., said she asks for help from and shares potential candidates with other recruiters across the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing a physician to the province or to Canada anywhere is good,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McCorkell said she’s seen an increase in applications from doctors in the United States, given that country’s increasingly turbulent political climate. She said White Rock also welcomes a particularly high number of candidates from the U.K. <\/p>\n
This year\u2019s conference in Charlottetown also emphasized the importance of recruiting to a family as a whole rather than an individual doctor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does your husband like to do? Your partner? Your kids? What do you as a family like to do?” she said. “Then I cater this story and the pitch to what the family needs.”<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778423711_192_default.jpg\")
Health P.E.I. had previously set a goal to reduce the patient registry to fewer than 5,000 people by 2027. (Julien Lecacheur\/Radio-Canada)<\/p>\n
McCorkell said the recruitment process can take as long as 18 months, and that some recruiters start engaging with potential future physicians before they graduate from high school. <\/p>\n
She said smoother, faster immigration processes would help speed up hiring new doctors. McCorkell is also an advocate for a pan-Canadian licensure that allows physicians to freely practise in any Canadian province.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some physicians in P.E.I. are also eligible to work in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. <\/p>\n
Doctors in Atlantic Canada who want to practice in other provinces outside this region would need to apply for additional licences.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although artificial intelligence is now available to assist with some recruitment tasks, Desjardins believes that the job will never be fully replaced.<\/p>\n
\u201cCommunities don\u2019t realize that we\u2019re not only recruiters, but we\u2019re immigration consultations or marketing experts. We\u2019re babysitters when the physician comes to site visit, we watch their kids for them,” he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a little bit of everything, and we\u2019re consistently on the clock.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moving to Prince Edward Island shouldn\u2019t be a hard sell \u2014 think world-class beaches, fresh lobster and Cows…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-660343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778423710_470_default.jpg\")
Even though Island life should be an easy sell when it comes to recruiting doctors to work here, the province’s patient registry is still moving in the wrong direction. (Tourism Industry Association of Prince Edward Island)<\/p>\n