Family doctor program at Queen's finishes 1st year

Queen's University launched a new program through its family medicine program last fall tocombat theongoing shortage of family doctors, and two first-year students say the hands-on experience has been invaluable.

The Queen's-Lakeridge program was established to drum up interest in family medicine by giving students early exposure to clinical practice. This includes weekly placements at local family medicine clinics and month-long placements shadowing doctors in rural communities.

Mina Jordanides and Laura Vresk are two of the 20 students completing their first year of the program.

"I loved the longevity of the relationships I was able to form," Vresk said. "I felt like I had more to offer to patients and their families than focusing on one aspect of their health."

More than two million people living in Ontario have no access to a family doctor, and while there have been many suggestions on how to solve this problem have been put forward, the issue hasn't been resolved.

Both students had their own reasons for wanting to go into family medicine.

Jordanidesfaced the challenge of findinga family doctor in Toronto after aging out of pediatric care. She said she waited in the emergency room for eight hours because she couldn'tget a referral for an X-ray.

"It's a waste of resources," Jordanides told CBC's All In A Day. "[The ER] should be a last resort option."

Fewer grads going into family medicine

One of the main problems contributing to the family doctor shortage is that more medical students are choosing to specializein fields such as psychiatry, emergency medicine and pediatrics.

In 2014, 37.8 per cent of Canadian medical school graduates went into family medicine, compared to 30.3 per cent in 2023.

For those who choose family medicine, medical students traditionallyspend four years in the classroom before completing a two-year residency.

Those residency placements are highly competitive, but notin the Queen's-Lakeridge program where placements are in the Durham region and are completed concurrently over the course of the program.

The reduced level of competition has brought the cohort closer together according to Jordanides, who referred to her colleagues as a "supportive family."

The future of family practice

The Canadian Medical Association reported in 2021 that one in two doctors experiencehigh levels of burnout. The ratio is significantly higher in family medicine.

Jordanides and Vresk cited a number of factors leading to burnout among physicians includingthe amount of paperwork doctors have to complete.

"There's already been discussions around streamlining that process," Vresk said. "It's one piece of the system that can really bog down family doctors."

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Another area that needs to be addressed is developing a universal electronic health record system. This would allow doctors to easily access results from specialists and compile all their patients' information inone place.

"A lot less will fall through the cracks if everything is in one system," Vresk said.

Both students stressed the important role familydoctors play not only in the community, but also for the health-care system as a whole.

"If we don't have family doctors, the whole health-care system goes down. That's really motivating me to keep going down this path,"Jordanides said.