All across Canada, people are seeing an increased difficulty when it comes to receiving health-care due to staff shortages across the board. Locally, within Martensville, Saskatoon, Warman and surrounding areas, we are seeing private clinics offering limited walk-in options, or cancelling them all-together, longer wait times within the clinics that do offer walk-in hours, extended ER wait times, and zero clinics within the area that are accepting new patients.
In May of 2022, a statement released by Dr. Katherine Smart, Past President of the Canadian Medical Association stated that in 2019, there were approximately 4.6 million Canadians that were without access to a primary care provider. Additionally, there are emergency departments across the country that are closing due to the staff shortages they are facing. The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) noted that despite the challenges that came with Covid, the issues creating today’s healthcare crisis were in place long before the pandemic.
“There is a concerning supply and demand gap developing. In December 2021, 2,400 family physician positions were advertised on government recruitment websites across Canada. In 2020, however, just over 1,400 family physicians exited the post graduate training system to enter practice. This trend isn’t new. In the six-year period between 2015 and 2021, the percentage of medical graduates choosing family medicine fell from 38.5% to 31.8%,” Smart explained.
In August of this year, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) released results from their 2021 National Physician Health Survey which showed that physicians are struggling in the under-resourced healthcare system and the effects of the pandemic. Nearly half of survey respondents (48%) screened positive for depression, which is an increase from 33% in 2017.
Results also showed that more than half of physicians and medical learners (53%) are experiencing high levels of burn-out and 49% were considering reducing their clinical work within the next two years.
“Every day we hear physicians expressing despair at the state of our health system, the strain that all health workers are facing and the fact that our patients are suffering. Since this survey was completed, the strain on health workers has continued to grow with no signs of a break coming. Physicians need help and support so they can continue to provide quality care to patients,” CMA President Dr. Alika Lafontaine explained.
According to Dr. Allison Adamus of Martensville Collective Health and Wellness, the current system that is in place when it comes to family medicine is broken; however, she remains hopeful that there is a solution – it just requires the right people in place to do that.
“We are seeing too many doctors leaving, and not enough are coming in. The number of applicants for Family Medicine are dramatically declining year after year, so where needs are increasing, we are seeing a large number of doctors retiring, less coming in and it is creating a major hole in our tank. Those new doctors that are coming in are choosing to work in other systems because they don’t want to work in a system that is broken – they don’t want to end up like us,” Dr. Adamus stated.
Read next week’s issue of the Martensville Messenger for more information on the current health-care crisis in Canada.
