Sustainability of family medicine

Canada is experiencing a shortage of family physicians. Bruce Wright and associates1 have identified several factors that might be used to increase the number of medical students choosing to enter family medicine. For its part, the Professional Association of Internes and Residents of Ontario recently developed a position paper on the sustainability of family medicine, offering a view of this crisis from the perspective of Ontario's new physicians.2

As our position paper states,1 we believe that the lack of interest in family medicine initially develops during training, for a variety of reasons, including a lack of exposure to effective teamwork between family physicians and specialists. In addition, the position paper identifies many societal factors that have influenced the decline in supply of family physicians in Canada. All of these factors will require short-term interventions married with a long-term strategy.

Positive exposure to family practice in medical school and clerkship can spark new interest in the field, as well as reinforcing existing interest. For such exposure to occur, a cadre of dynamic and enthusiastic family physicians is required both within medical schools and in community practice. The concerns of practising family physicians, including reasonable workloads and appropriate payment mechanisms, must be addressed to make such student experiences possible, and new family physicians must be encouraged to undertake a mentorship role and must be supported in fulfilling that role.