Fewer medical students are pursuing family practices, and these doctors are worried – CBC
Steady decline in students ranking family medicine as their top choice, data shows
Jul 11, 2022
Fewer medical school graduates are choosing to go into family medicine and open primary-care practices, data shows, at a time when more than one million Ontarians can’t find a family doctor and just as many are set to lose the ones they already have.
Data from the Canadian Resident Matching Service shows a steady decrease in the number of medical students choosing family medicine as their first choice of practice over the past seven years.
Only 30.7 percent of students in Canada ranked family medicine as their top choice in 2022, down from 31.4 percent in 2021 and 38 percent in 2015.
What’s more, nearly every aspiring family physician is snatched up immediately upon their residency placement, with more than 97 per cent finding a match this year — higher than any other discipline.
Students and researchers who spoke with CBC attribute the problem to a growing negative impression of family medicine, fuelled by what they feel is an endless stream of anecdotes about doctor burnout.
