This story is part of CBC Health’s Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.
A patient sounds slightly short of breath with a subtle decline in their strength.
The diagnosis? It could literally be anything, says Dr. Mike Allan, CEO of the College of Family Physicians of Canada.
Subtle changes, like a slight difference in a person’s behaviour, can be harder for doctors to sort out to direct patients to the right tests and treatments, compared with someone clearly clutching their chest, which can signal a heart attack.
Family physicians don’t focus on one specific area of care. Rather, they’re skilled at taking the whole patient into consideration, said Allan. “That is where the family doctor thrives.”
But an estimated 6.5 million Canadians don’t have a family physician or nurse practitioner for their regular medical care, which Allan, who has trained with the Canadian Forces and has also worked as a civilian physician, called “beyond sad and frustrating.”
Dr. Tony Sanfilippo, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., called it astounding. In a country committed to universal health care and devoting massive resources to medical education, he says it’s a mystery that we’re in this bind.
Sanfilippo’s new book, The Doctors We Need: Imagining a New Path for Physician Recruitment, Training, and Support, explores the root causes.
“Our system for medical education and for producing doctors has not evolved with the needs of society,” he said.
Now, three new programs for family medicine are on track to start in September. The deans for Canada’s three new programs for family medicine — at Simon Fraser University in Surrey, B.C., Toronto Metropolitan University in Brampton, Ont., and the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown — aim to help meet the needs by changing training and shifting focus to team-based care.
WATCH | Lining up for primary care:
