For years we have been sorry to see family medicine shunned. No one fell out of their chair when they learned that 65 family medicine residency positions remained vacant in the second round. The surprise was greater when The duty revealed that several new graduates in family medicine have turned their noses up at the positions intended for them. No less than 35 places on the outskirts of Montreal have been left behind. This should worry the Minister of Health, as he tackles the “refoundation” of the health system.
Cornerstone of the first line, in which Minister Christian Dubé has concentrated most of his eggs, family medicine is hurting his profession. And it’s not just the prerogative of the younger generation. Experienced doctors are also crying out for help. In these pages, the DD Pascale Breault concluded that “office” family medicine, the most rewarding but the most difficult, in her opinion, had become so cumbersome to practice in Quebec that it had become “executioner’s medicine”.
The pressure put on the shoulders of general practitioners by the Legault government is not unrelated to this state of mind. With some 990,000 patients registered at the family doctor access counter, Quebec is right to be impatient and to boldly defend its Bill 11 aimed at increasing the supply of front-line services even if it general practitioners.
A fan of carrots rather than sticks, Christian Dubé made the right choice by betting on improving the conditions of practice thanks to a reorganization based on interdisciplinarity. However, he ignores a key factor: the very desire to give a chance to this system, which has become rigid and bloodless through botched reforms. If more and more new doctors are turning against the regional medical staffing plans on which their positions depend (and the specific medical activities that come with them), it is because they have found better elsewhere: in the private sector, in Ontario. or troubleshooting in remote areas.
However, when future and present physicians worry in unison about the future of this profession, we say to ourselves that the chronic disease that undermines the care of patients in Quebec could become terminal. There remains a shock treatment: to restore family medicine to its former flexibility. This without giving even an inch to the primacy of patient needs. They’ve been waiting too long already.
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