'Just isn't sustainable': More family doctors leave practice in Greater Victoria
CTV
With thousands of patients struggling to find a family doctor on the South Island, physicians who have or are planning to leave say it doesn't make their decision easy.
A Victoria family, with two parents working as physicians, struggles to find regular, reliable childcare for their three kids, and the pandemic made it even more difficult.
"I could probably talk to you for an hour about that," said Dr. Sarah Lea, of Victoria.
Lea transitioned out of her family practice earlier in the new year, not to leave medicine entirely, but to refine her workload in a career with greater flexibility and what she calls a better pay model.
"It's the cost of running the business in family medicine that just isn't sustainable," she said.
"You only get paid when you're seeing a patient under fee for service medicine – so any notes, any labs, all has to be done after hours."
The choice to leave for her, and others, comes with guilt for the many patients they leave behind.
"Feels like you're abandoning people," said Lea.
Another doctor from the Grow Health clinic in View Royal, B.C., has just told patients she's made the "incredibly difficult" decision to leave her practice at the end of June to move closer to family in Ontario.
