Most medical grads stay in Sask., but doctor shortage persists

It’s not just family doctors that are in high demand in Saskatchewan.

According to Dr. Karen Shaw, CEO of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan (CPSS), the province is short on all types of doctors, both those working in a general practice and specialists of all types.

“Our system is stressed in all aspects of care,” Shaw said. “I don’t think there’s one area of specialty that has enough physicians.”

Despite the province’s need for physicians, Shaw said the issue is not caused by Saskatchewan-trained doctors leaving the province.

A study completed by the Undergraduate Medical Education program at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine looked at graduates from the school between 2013 and 2017.

It found that as of last summer, almost 87 per cent of grads who were matched to a family practice in Saskatchewan remained in the province, with 74.7 per cent of those who matched to a residency program in Saskatchewan choosing to stay.

Among those who specialized, 65.5 per cent who matched to Saskatchewan programs remained in Saskatchewan.

Just over half the graduates surveyed in the study are still practising in Saskatchewan today, and 20 per cent who matched to residency programs outside the province have since returned to Saskatchewan to practise.

With the evidence showing that most medical students who train here choose to remain in Saskatchewan, Shaw said the CPSS is currently working with the Saskatchewan Health Authority and other bodies to figure out how and where the system can increase its capacity to train doctors.

In the long term, more spots for family physicians could be added in the province, a move other medical schools in Canada have already made.

“We’re all trying to pull together to figure out how we can get enough capacity in the system,” Shaw said. “We know that if we can keep our residents training here — our medical students going into residency spots here in Saskatchewan — our retention of them is much greater.”

The Ministry of Health, College of Medicine and others have come together to provide more support to new graduates during their first five years practising, Shaw said, in the hope that patient experiences, community engagement, and physician participation in education will all be improved.

“It’s really to ensure that we’re giving them the best opportunity to succeed in the early stages of practise,” she said.

Shaw said the CPSS is “very well aware and concerned” about the shortage of physicians. After tough years filled with worry around COVID-19, the already-stressed system has been stretched even thinner lately due to a growing number of Influenza A and RSV infections that are driving up demand.

The CPSS’s core work is regulating physicians who practise medicine in the province, Shaw explained. That comes with a responsibility to protect the public by ensuring only fully competent physicians are licensed and registered. Shaw said certain accommodations can be made, but all doctors are still required to meet the standards set by CPSS.

“We’ve become as flexible as we can in terms of processes for them to be able to demonstrate that they meet the current standard,” Shaw said.

“Our governing council feels that these are minimum standards of the present time, and we will do what we can to assist physicians in meeting those standards.”

The past few years have also seen several new processes established to help integrate internationally trained doctors into Saskatchewan’s health-care system and ensure they meet the stringent standards for accreditation. Currently, Shaw said the province depends on those internationally trained physicians.

Shaw pointed out that some family doctors working today aren’t practising the traditional “cradle-to-grave” style of family medicine, and instead choose to focus on certain specific aspects of care.

According to Shaw, there are very few comprehensive family physicians working in the province at the moment, and many are aging out of their practices. She said an absence of clear data — with fragmented statistics scattered across multiple governing bodies — makes it hard to know exactly how many physicians are actually practising in Saskatchewan.

Shaw said she sees no simple solutions to the shortages in Saskatchewan and Canada at the moment. She said she understands that people are getting very agitated and frustrated by delays, but asked for a bit of extra patience from the patients.

“We understand that when you need a doctor, you don’t have a doctor, it’s very frustrating,” she said.

Shaw said she hopes patients will be kind and compassionate to the doctors who she said are already tired, yet are still going above and beyond to offer as much care as possible.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an amended version of this story, correcting which organization did the study.