Five years?

The largest nursing home in the Halifax area is hiring a nurse practitioner. The normally meek Don Connolly, host of the local CBC Radio One morning show, sounded baffled when he interviewed the home's medical director, and wondered why such an obvious solution to the problem of lack of medical staff hadn't been put in place sooner.

The guest explained that they had been working on this project for "four or five years", with grant money to set up a research project that would allow for evidence-based research proving a nurse practitioner would be helpful.

Well, duh. You've got 434 residents, served by 3 family doctors. You don't need a research protocol to know that it might be handy to have someone on staff who can do some diagnosing, prescribe drugs and order tests.