Official announcement have confirmed that the Alberta Government will be spending as much as $8 Million in order to effectively direct more graduates of medical school towards family medicine, where the state is facing a large-scale and prevailing shortage of doctors.

Announced on Thursday, the funds would be invested into University of Calgary's Family Medicine Department, and these would help train more medical students and doctors in family medicine, create as many as 5 new faculty posts and support research.

"[The funding] helps stabilize our department. It helps it grow and build greater capacity. Our goal is that by 2013, half of our graduates are choosing family medicine as their first choice of career", said Dr. David Keegan, the Department's Undergraduate Education Director.

Despite the fact that there are currently about 4,000 family doctors in Alberta, it has been estimated that at least 1,000 more are required for the province's population of 3.5 million.

In the year 2008, only about 18% of the medical graduates in Calgary went on to pursue family medicine as a career option, which was the lowest number recorded in the University's history.