Saint John moved closer to having New Brunswick's first English-language medical school, as the province announced Monday that internal medicine students will do residencies at a city hospital.

Under a joint agreement between the medical school at Dalhousie University in Halifax, the Atlantic Health Sciences Corporation and the province, the students will begin postings at the Saint John Regional Hospital beginning in the summer, provincial Health Minister Mike Murphy said.

"I'm very pleased to announce that the first specialty medical training program in New Brunswick, an internal medicine program, will be established this year right here in Saint John," Murphy said in a lunch-hour speech.

Every year, two medical students specializing in internal medicine will do the first three years of their residency in Saint John, adding to the staff of 42 at the Saint John Regional.

The students will finish their residencies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, but hospital chief of internal medicine Dr. John Dornan said the internships would help improve recruitment and retention in Saint John.

"We know that where people do their specialty training is where they're most likely to spend the rest of their careers," Dornan said Monday.

"We are hopeful that other departments, like psychiatry and pediatrics, will follow our lead and start to train specialists in the province."

The province's first French-language school opened in Moncton in September 2006, operated jointly by the Université de Sherbrooke and the Université de Moncton.

Members of the Atlantic Health Sciences Corporation were listening closely to Murphy's speech, pleased with concrete plans like the new residency and promises to start construction on an expanded emergency room in 2006.

However, they said they still need immediate solutions to the problems of long wait times, and how to deal with a crowded ER.

"We've got 25 per cent of our beds that are tied up by discharged patients in the region now," said Dr. Michael Barry of the Atlantic Health Sciences Corporation.

"We have no place to put them. That's a provincial issue, that's a national issue, so we have to find a way we can find a place to discharge those patients in a place that's appropriate."

The Saint John medical program won't be a full-fledged English-speaking school, unlike the French school in Moncton. However, the minister said he would have another announcement soon.