It is a broad question. Perhaps, if you don't mind, I'll start with an opening statement.
I very much appreciate your commendation of the university's northern medical unit's work, but I would also caution you by saying that in my decades of involvement in university-affiliated programs, we still are falling remarkably short. We're falling short in recruitment and retention, and our percentage of complement of practitioners is profoundly low. We fall short in our ability to address some disease entities, although recent published peer-reviewed literature has identified that where we work and where similar organizations work, the outcomes are better, but the outcomes are far from what the Canadian mainstream population faces.
With that apologia, I would say that yes, we have made some movement in the decades we've been involved in care, as have other Canadian university medical school affiliated programs, but we need to take a look at that model, intensify it.
Where can the federal government help? I think we need your assistance and that of the provincial and territorial leaders to clearly define the health human resources need in terms of skill set. I think we need to identify what the competencies really are for health human resources or health professionals' communities, whether they be physicians, dentists, rehab therapists, nurses, or unregulated health professionals. We need to establish educational programs to assist individuals in getting that skill set and maintaining their competency.
I think unfortunately there's often an underestimation of the skill set, and the mainstream education system does not address the evolving patterns of epidemiology in the communities, so that physicians, nurses, and others are profoundly challenged to address the needs. This becomes an issue for recruitment but also for retention, as they feel increasingly comfortable in the needs they must have.
So increasingly a partnership between the federal-provincial-territorial leadership, the academic institutions, and the regulatory bodies that assist us in attaining and maintaining competency in a very unique and challenged environment would be the kind of assistance we need.
I think it's generalizing it and revisiting the liaisons between academic health science networks, medical schools, health professional schools, and northern and challenged populations, or subsets of our population, realigning and revisiting that model but also building on the so-called social accountability needs of our medical schools and other health professionals to recognize they need to be educated in and practise with communities regionally, nationally, and internationally to share the expertise that we have and to intensify the expertise to the benefit of the population.
Does that answer your question?