The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) proposed last week to increase medical admissions by 660 places over four years.1. This proposal follows that of the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ), which wishes to increase medical admissions by 1,000 places over five years.2. These increases are part of a larger strategy aimed at countering the shortage of health workers and ensuring better access to first-line care, in particular by guaranteeing a family doctor to all Quebecers.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
As medical students, access to care and the labor shortage are at the heart of our concerns for the future of the Quebec health system. However, we are concerned about the feasibility of the suggested increase, which risks compromising the quality of medical education in Quebec. Medical schools are already facing a historic spike in admissions, a 26.5% increase from 2019 to 20253. We are concerned that the saturation of internship environments will harm the quantity and quality of clinical exposure that will benefit medical learners, an issue that the promised investments can hardly solve.
We are also of the opinion that the increase in medical admissions must imperatively be accompanied by an equivalent increase in residency positions to ensure the retention of medical staff in the province. Added to this is the challenge of convincing new medical students of the appeal of family medicine, which has proven difficult in recent years. In 2022, respectively 75 and 65 family medicine residency positions remained vacant across Quebec. Most of the unfilled positions were in remote or semi-remote areas.
Considering the current difficulty in recruiting medical residents to practice in the regions, the issue once again seems to be linked to the attractiveness of practicing in the regions rather than the simple lack of medical staff.
We therefore invite the political parties not to underestimate the fundamental issues of promoting regional medicine and family medicine in their reflection on the increase in medical admissions in Quebec.
To this end, the Quebec Student Medical Federation (FMEQ) had already proposed to elected officials in 2020 to improve the R rating of students from the regions to promote their admission, to create contingents of students from semi-remote regions and regions and to make rotations in rural areas compulsory for all medical students in Quebec. We had also proposed several measures to promote the attraction of students to family medicine, including the development of advanced skills programs as well as a diversity and flexibility of specific medical activities.
Moreover, physicians cannot and should not be the only gateway to the health system. Political parties must bank on the creation of organizational contexts where the clinical potential of each health professional is optimized in the exercise of their specific expertise.
For a truly interdisciplinary approach to health, the FMEQ also suggests including the services offered by health professionals other than doctors in the basket of services covered by the Régie d’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ).
In conclusion, the increase in medical admissions as proposed by certain political parties seems unreasonable to us, given the already critical situation in medical teaching environments. Moreover, we firmly believe that without concrete actions to promote family medicine and medicine in the regions, the increase in admissions will not have the expected effects on access to first line and access to care. in rural areas for Quebecers.