Written by Joelle Masia Mandala
In a world where disease runs rampant across countries, doctors are needed. I have seen my friends and family receive inadequate treatment from hospitals time and time again. I’ve personally waited in the emergency room for 10 hours to seek medical help. In the process, I got an eye infection and an extraordinarily short visit with a doctor during which he only told me to see a specialist. I made an appointment for the earliest opening, six months later.
When we think of medicine, we often think of prestige and pressed lab coats. It’s a difficult and lucrative profession, and very respectable. We neglect to emphasize that being a doctor is not your name on a degree. It’s not a smile and a stethoscope. It’s being surrounded by people in some of the worst situations and doing everything in your power to give them back their normality.
The glamorization of medicine has certainly stemmed from the exclusivity of healthcare. In Canada, there are a total of 2,860 spots in first-year medical school [1] (a devastatingly low number for aspiring physicians), and around the same number of yearly medical school graduates who need years of training before becoming established professionals.
Although this number seems large from a graduation standpoint, there are 1,280 hospitals in Canada, most of which experience doctor shortages (see figure 1) [2]. Incoming MD graduates need training and resources to complete their residency and then specialize before they become autonomous doctors. Even then, some doctors leave to open their own clinics because of the strenuous conditions of a hospital. Doctors take on a heavy workload and are constantly making life-altering decisions for their patients. Being overworked does not allow them to be at their best mental capacity to be making these decisions, and robs patients of the best quality of care. So, doctors leave hospitals and they become even more under-staffed.
Figure 1. Number of hospitals in Canada as of 2022 [2].
Some may say that acceptance into medical school should be regulated because doctors need to be the best of the best. That’s true, but I guarantee there are more than 3,000 smart, capable applicants every year and they are being turned down simply because medical schools don’t have enough spaces. What makes this even more infuriating is that the reason there are so few spots in medical school is that the government wants to limit the costs of healthcare. Fewer medical students means fewer doctors, which leads to fewer salaries that need to be paid on top of hospital operating expenses [3].
On July 1, 1962, doctors in Saskatchewan went on strike to protest a new medicare law that might have decreased their wages. The government responded swiftly by bringing in replacement doctors from the United States and Britain, ending the strike within a month [3]. If they were able to find enough capable doctors at such short notice then, they could certainly find more if they wanted to today.
Free healthcare in this country looks like overflowing emergency rooms waiting for overworked doctors. “Free,” yes, “healthcare,” no. Healthcare professionals are spread thinly between patients, and as the population increases, the number of hospitals and staff does not follow suit. Healthcare is becoming less accessible as time goes on, an issue that will become foreseeably worse [4]. People will get attacked by disease, but steer clear of packed hospitals and months-late doctor appointments. They will fight with Tylenol and exercise until the damage is so detrimental their bodies cannot ignore it. What could have been preventable becomes life-threatening and expensive, as the government would note.
The exclusivity of healthcare is hurting the population at an alarmingly exponential rate. There aren’t enough medical students to fill the hospitals, so patients do not receive adequate care and doctors do not have productive working conditions [4]. A simple fix? Allocating the necessary resources to medical institutions. The current shortage is not about lacking doctors (both aspiring and actual) but a choice the Canadian government is making to prioritize budget cuts over accessible and equitable healthcare.
References
Grierson L, Vanstone M. The Allocation of Medical School Spaces in Canada by Province and Territory: The Need for Evidence-Based Health Workforce Policy. Healthc Policy. 2021;16(3):106-118. doi:10.12927/hcpol.2021.26429
Number of hospital establishments in Canada as of 2022, by province. Statista. Published 2022. Accessed March 1, 2024. https://www.statista.com/statistics/440923/total-number-of-hospital-establishments-in-cana
Keller T. Opinion: Canada has a doctor shortage. But if governments wanted, we could have a doctor surplus. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-canada-has-a-doctor-shortage-but-if-governments-wanted-we-could-have-a/#:~:text=It%20all%20comes%20down%20to. Published August 4, 2023.
Owens B. If Canada needs more doctors, why hasn't medical school enrolment increased?. CMAJ. 2018;190(42):E1266-E1267. doi:10.1503/cmaj.109-5649
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