Why it's hard to find a family doctor — and what's being done about it
CBC
When a physician can't get a family doctor, you know there's a problem.
Dr. Kimberly Thompson attended medical school in the Caribbean, did her clinical training in Chicago, then returned home to Toronto in 2019 to learn her family physician had retired.
"Ever since then, for the last few years, I've been trying to find a family doctor," Thompson said in an interview with CBC Toronto.
Thompson is just one of the estimated 1.8 million Ontarians without a family physician.
That number increased sharply during the pandemic, which spurred hundreds of family doctors to stop practicing, and it's poised to grow further still with many aging baby-boomer doctors planning to retire.
The trend is triggering a push for solutions to the family doctor shortage: making family practice more attractive to medical school graduates, streamlining family doctors' paperwork to give them more time to see patients, and giving other health professionals a greater role in primary care.
The family doctor shortage has an impact even on patients who have one, because of ripple effects elsewhere in the health system.
Long-established research has found people without a regular family physician have greater reliance on emergency rooms and are more likely to end up hospitalized.
For Thompson, her go-to source of primary health care has been walk-in clinics.
"Even though the family doctors that I did see there were very helpful … I was constantly having to retell my story, retell my medical history," she said.
Addressing Ontario's family doctor crunch is a complex task that won't be quickly achieved, experts say. It's not as simple as increasing the number of spots in the province's medical schools.
There's been a steady and significant decline in the proportion of newly trained Canadian doctors choosing family medicine. Those who do make that choice need to find someone within the dwindling crop of currently practising family physicians to supervise them.
"We don't have enough family doctors in the system right now. Every patient in Ontario should have a family doctor," said Dr. Rose Zacharias, president of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA), the group that represents all doctors in the province.
"We can say we have a doctor shortage and we need more physicians, but we need to be very strategic about what type of physicians we need where," Zacharias said in an interview.
'Tis the season for cuddling on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate and watching holiday movies. And for people in B.C.'s Interior, that can increasingly mean seeing their home communities on display.
Every year, snowy owls spread their wings and migrate down to the Prairies, where they enjoy access to plenty of rodent prey in vast open spaces.
This month has been a busy stretch at the Upper Room Food Bank in Charlottetown.
N.W.T. Education Minister Caitlin Cleveland says she has received the final report from an independent investigation into education bodies in the Dehcho region.
P.E.I.’s auditor general says he’s concerned and disappointed that the projected deficit has doubled what government initially estimated it would be — and he's urging the province to balance its budget.
A man found not criminally responsible for stabbing five people to death at a Calgary house party is getting more freedoms but not an absolute discharge.
A man has been found guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting death of a Toronto mother outside a supervised consumption site in Leslieville.
Russian olive trees — sometimes known as silver berry or oleaster — are small, ornamental plants with silvery leaves and black bark, and small yellow flowers and silver fruit that look like miniature olives. They’re pretty, but they’re a problem.
The Yukon Legislative Assembly’s fall sitting ended on Thursday after the territorial government introduced and passed a supplementary budget.
A Canadian military counter-intelligence operative, who stands accused of passing sensitive information to Ukraine, was involved in an investigation into allegations that a leading Canadian defence journalist was a longtime Russian asset.
An Alberta panel aimed at finding ways the province can strengthen its autonomy has offered up seven recommendations, including options for referendum topics.
People won't be able to travel along B.C.'s Highway 3 without significant delays and detours over the holiday season, says the Ministry of Transportation.
Photos of a wooden box, allegedly used for student "time outs" at an elementary school in Akwesasne, drew shock and anger from parents this week and have prompted an investigation by the school district.