Challenges for rural communities in recruiting and retaining physicians: a fictional tale helps examine the issues.

In the 2003 Québécois movie Seducing Dr Lewis, 1 the island of Sainte-Marie-la-Mauderne in Quebec is in decline, with many of its residents unemployed. A company offers the island’s citizens hope for a more prosperous future when it considers building a factory on the island; however, there is one catch: the community must have a permanent family physician. The community’s recruitment attempts for a physician have failed for 15 years. Then, through nefarious means, a young doctor, Christopher Lewis, is exiled to the island for a month. Now the community’s only hope is to seduce Dr Lewis to stay. This movie offers a number of issues for discussion about the recruitment and retention of family physicians to rural and remote areas. In this commentary, we use the movie to present some of the challenges for rural communities during these processes. The literature on this topic often highlights the perspectives of physicians but not those of communities. It is important to consider the perspectives of communities, as research establishes that they are key to determining why physicians choose some places to practise over others.2-6 Additionally, as some physicians participate in community recruitment processes, it might be helpful to understand the viewpoints of communities in more depth.