Your group will review a case study. This case outlines physician attraction issues faced by Windsor, a mid-size Canadian city located in southwestern Ontario. The city is experiencing a severe physician shortage. To address this shortage, city leaders must create a compelling vision of the benefits that incoming doctors might anticipate when setting up their practices in their area. To that end, the City of Windsor has created the Health Services Recruitment Ofce staffed by an HR director with previous experience in other industries. The director is responsible for locating and attracting candidates but not for screening or selection. Her immediate challenge is to find a general practitioner for a local hospital, but her long-term goal is to address the substantial physician shortage throughout the region in hospitals, clinics, and family practices.

Your presentation must cover the following information:

*What strategic actions can the director take in the long term to increase the successful recruitment of doctors?

*Develop an advertisement that can be used to recruit doctors.

CASE OVERVIEW

Physician recruitment in the Windsor-Essex region of southwestern Ontario, Canada, is an ongoing challenge. Today is even busier than normal in the Regional Physician Recruitment Office because three potential candidates have approached the director of Health Services for possible job opportunities in the Windsor area. The director is excited by the prospects of new recruits. After reading Tackling the Doctor Shortage, a discussion paper from The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (http://www.cpso.on.ca), she thought she could customize and implement some recommendations suggested in the paper to address the doctor shortage in Windsor.

ROLE OF THE REGIONAL PHYSICIAN RECRUITMENT OFFICE IN WINDSOR-ESSEX

In response to the severe doctor shortage, Windsor created the Health Services Recruitment Office staffed by the director of Health Services Recruitment, an HR professional with extensive experience in the recruitment field. She began her recruiting career with a local police department and then shifted into the medical field and began recruiting solely for a local hospital. She has worked for the Regional Physician Recruitment Office since it opened three years ago and has since successfully recruited more than 100 physicians into the region. The positions mandate is to meet community medical needs using recruiting practices based on developing long-lasting relationships with potential recruits.

At the Health Services Recruitment Office, the director is the sole recruiter for the area and is responsible for staffing hospitals, clinics, and private practices throughout the region. Her office was created to provide one-stop shopping for all healthcare recruitment needs in the region. The office has since evolved into an informational unit that provides physicians with information on employment opportunities and the certification processes for Ontario. In addition to her recruiting activities, she helps individuals obtain licensing under Ontario standards. Her duties are quite distinguishable from regular recruiters; she is not responsible for screening or selecting appropriate physicians. Because of the dire physician shortage, she must create a compelling vision of the benefits incoming doctors can anticipate when setting up their practices in the Windsor area.