To the editor:
This past Tuesday, the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) released the first iteration of the 2024 Match. This match indicates medical students’ entry into varying fields of medical specialties including family medicine. The results, which we unfortunately anticipated, continue to show that fewer and fewer medical students in Ontario are choosing Family Medicine as their specialty. This bodes poorly for the future healthcare needs of all Ontarians.
See related: New doctors don’t want to pursue family medicine in Ontario say physicians
Governments have been asked for years to meaningfully invest in family medicine and support family doctors in Ontario. Despite this, there were 108 unfilled training spots for family medicine out of a total of 558 available spots (essentially there were positions available, but no one wanted them). This is an increase in vacant family medicine training spots from 2023 (100), 2022 (61), 2021 (52) and 2020 (30). This continues a disturbing downward trend in medical students choosing family medicine and includes an alarming number of unfilled training spots in major cities like London and Kingston.
We are not surprised.
In the preceding weeks, the current family medicine crisis seems to be increasingly discussed in the media, however, what is not really appreciated is that front-line physicians have been warning for years that this crisis was coming, only to be ignored. As far back as 2016, front-line physicians were warning about burnout in family medicine. Physicians warned against bureaucratic metrics being ineffective and harmful in family medicine. Physicians warned that the government had to support family medicine, or a massive shortage would be headed our way.
In that vein, this week's CaRMS match results for family medicine are entirely predictable. The underwhelming outcome resulted from an unsustainable economic model for office-based family practice and a lack of respect and understanding for the role family physicians play in healthcare, by multiple levels and iterations of governments in power.
Family physicians are the foundation of a strong healthcare system, and a healthy population. Study after study after study in multiple countries with high-functioning healthcare systems prove this. The foundation in Ontario is cracking badly and in desperate need of repair. In the past decade, two different governments, three health ministers and four deputy health ministers have ignored family medicine.
Only the government can fix this. Other provinces have begun taking those steps. Will Ontario?
It’s time to tell the Government of Ontario to listen to the Family Doctors who have been voicing concerns and raising solutions and to listen to concerned Ontarians before our healthcare system erodes.
Sincerely,
Dr. Ramsey Hijazi, Dr. Vakar Khan, and Dr. Alex Duong
on behalf of The Ontario Union of Family Physicians
The Ontario Union of Family Physicians is a grassroots movement of over 1900 Ontario Family Physicians who want to effect change for a better and sustainable health care landscape. The organization is formed, led by, and contributed to by family physicians who work clinically. The OUFP is a not-for-profit movement driven on volunteered personal time, effort, and finances to advocate for a better, equitable, and sustainable public health care system.
