Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
There's a shortage of GPs across the country. It's a much larger economic issue. Canada has an extremely low amount of medical school spots, that are extremely competitive to get into. Many students come out of medical school with large amounts of debt, and many competitive people don't want to live middle class lifestyles. Convincing medical students to willingly become GPs is a difficult task.
Even if you increased pay, it probably wouldn't fix the issue. The cost of living and property is so out of site, that giving GPs and extra $20-50k a year (which would not be a popular move), wouldn't change a thing.
It's also just as much to do with generational bottleknecking. For the last 30 years, they didn't need many doctors, as babyboomers had all the spots. Those doctors are retiring on mass and there's no one to replace them. The medical schools all maintained the same amount of medical school spots for decades, as the Gen X doctors entering the field were complaining about not having enough jobs available.
it's all a mess.
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As a father of a child who will be applying to med school this fall, I'd really appreciate it if they made a concerted effort to boost the number of spots.
As an aside, I just read today that Canada and the U.S. are two of the few (only?) countries that require an undergrad degree prior to attending med school.