Retired doctors are flocking to work at new walk-in referral clinic in Sherbrooke, Que., that organizers hope will ease pressure on  the region's health-care system.

The referral centre, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada, will be staffed by retired physicians interested in working in medicine after they've wrapped up their careers.

And though the pilot project still has to be approved by the Quebec College of Medicine, organizers believe they've come up with a novel approach to the province's chronic health-care problems. 

Hélène Gravel, president of Sherbrooke-based job placement agency l'Agence Continuum, said she got the idea while taking calls from doctors grappling with the challenges of retirement.

"When you are retired, you stop working, and you play golf, and go on trips, and do what you wanted to do when you stopped working," she said in an interview with CBC News. "After a while, you get bored, you lose friends, and you want to do something."

Quebec's health-care ills are well-known — from long lineups at emergency rooms to a shortage of family physicians — and the most common prescription for the system is more investment.

But the province doesn't "have more money to [invest], and people talk about private services," when there are other solutions at hand, such as this project, Gravel said.

The retirees, who still pay licensing fees to the Quebec College of Medicine, will be able to act as regular doctors in many respects, including prescribing medicine and referring patients to specialists, Gravel explained.

But the 20 doctors who have so far expressed interest in the clinic don't want to practise medicine as they did throughout their careers, Gravel said.

"If they saw a patient in the morning, they don't want to have to do a follow-up. They don't want to take the place of family doctors — but they want to do things differently."

"They could diagnose, but they don't want to," she said.

Can share experience

The provincial body representing doctors still hasn't approved the project, but retired physicians who have expressed interest in the clinic say they have a lot to offer patients, explained André Plante, a former professor of medicine at the Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Sherbrooke.

The volunteers will be "meeting people, but not practising medicine, to try to use their knowledge of the network in medicine to help people who don't have any physicians to get along in this network, which is complicated," said the retired Sherbrooke doctor.

If a patient with no family doctor comes in, and complains of general symptoms such as losing weight, feeling tired, having pain, they face a conundrum, Plante said. "Will you go to the emergency room with such symptoms? They might say 'you've had that for two months, go home and call your physician.'

"But if you don't have a physician, you need to see someone. Those are the symptoms of a very severe problem," he said. "If you know the health network, you can send this patient to the right person."

Plante compares the volunteer doctors to CPR Samaritans, strangers with first aid training who come to the rescue when someone collapses in a shopping mall. "If there is someone there who knows CPR, then you are very lucky. We are sort of the CPR Samaritans."

Retired doctors will also benefit from giving back to their communities through volunteering, which is difficult to do during a regular medical career, Plante said.

Idea also popular with nurses

About 20 doctors have been recruited so far, and the clinic needs a few more to round out its volunteer staff to 25, Gravel said.

Calls have been coming in from across the province from nurses, doctors and health professionals interested in giving back after retirement, she said.

The pilot project has applied for a $250,000 provincial grant to cover rent, insurance, equipment costs, and the salary for a full-time co-coordinator.

Services will be free when the non-profit clinic opens in May, as organizers hope, Gravel said.