Dr. Magda du Plessis
I never planned to be a rural doctor. But once I started working in a small community, I knew I had found my place.
I trained as a doctor in South Africa, where we are taught to be generalists. In rural communities, we do everything—emergency care, obstetrics, minor surgeries, hospital care, and family medicine. When I first moved to B.C., I tried urban medicine for seven months. I hated it. I was only allowed to do certain things, with rigid certification restrictions dictating what I could and couldn’t do. When I worked in Penticton, for example, I couldn’t do C-sections or work in emergency, despite being trained for it. That wasn’t for me. I wanted to use my full skill set.
In a small town like Dawson Creek, you don’t just see your patients in the clinic. You see them at the grocery store, at school events and at community gatherings. You can’t separate yourself from your work, and you wouldn’t want to. You fall in love with your community. You see the impact of your care firsthand. You want to do everything possible to make sure people get the care they deserve. If I don’t stand up for my community, who will?
Recruiting and retaining doctors is one of our biggest struggles. We used to have a urban-rural pay differential that made rural work attractive—that disappeared with the LFP. And with it, we’ve lost our ability to recruit. The doctors who are still here are being asked to do more and more.
Right now, 50 per cent of our population doesn’t have a family doctor. That means the doctors who are left are covering clinics, emergency shifts, hospital care, obstetrics and surgeries. We’re stretched thin. It’s not sustainable. Patients are frustrated and asking their MLA why they can’t see a doctor. We get calls from the MLA’s regularly, asking why the wait time to see a doctor is six weeks. We simply don’t have enough people to meet the demand.
On top of that, we don’t have enough allied health support. We have almost no social workers, no outpatient physiotherapy. If you break a leg, I have to teach you how to use crutches. If you have surgery in an urban centre, I have to manage your follow-up care because the specialists expect it. In rural medicine, you’re not just a doctor. You’re also a counselor, a rehab specialist, an advocate. The workload is enormous, and we’re struggling to keep up.
So why do I stay? Because I love my community, and I believe people in rural areas deserve the same level of care as those in big cities. Just because we live in the North doesn’t mean we should be left behind. If someone has a heart attack in Dawson Creek, they should get the same treatment as they would in Vancouver. We need equity.
For example, we need a hospitalist program, but our community is too small to have one. That means we depend on family doctors to handle hospital care on top of everything else. But family doctors are not adequately compensated for that work. With the large number of unattached patients, we are left taking care of the entire community. So it’s no surprise that people would rather practice in Vancouver, where they can focus on just one area of care, rather than come to Dawson Creek, where they have to do everything. If we want doctors to stay, we need real incentives, better resources and stronger support systems. Investing in rural medicine won’t just help our communities—it will also reduce the burden on urban doctors and specialists.
Rural medicine is tough, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. We do it because we care about our patients, our neighbours, and our communities. And we’ll keep pushing for the support we need to make sure everyone, no matter where they live, gets the care they deserve.
Dr. Magda du Plessis is a family doctor based in Dawson Creek. She is the District 12 North East representative on the BC Family Doctors board.