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LETTER: Family physician shortage will only get worse in Alberta

Doctor says medical students have clearly got the message that Alberta is not the place to practice family medicine. 
Dr Troy McKibbin Petition 0697 BWC
Okotoks physician Dr. Troy McKibbin poses in front of Okotoks Urgent Care on March 12, 2019. (Brent Calver/Western Wheel)

Dear Editor, 

The future of our healthcare system is in dire straits.  

Each year graduating medical students participate in the match where they rank residency training programs based on their preference of specialty and location. They are subsequently placed in one of these final steps of training after interviews. A large majority will end up practicing where they train.  

Alberta's family medicine residency programs have 42 unfilled spots in the first round of the match. This is compared to two vacancies in B.C. and zero in Saskatchewan.   

Medical students have clearly got the message that Alberta is not the place to practice family medicine.  It is not hard for them to see that the UCP government, particularly the former Kenney/Shandro dyad, has attacked family medicine. 

As much as our government touts family docs as the foundation of the healthcare system, they have markedly unstabilized it with policies that make family medicine untenable, driving family doctors from practice.  

Unless significant and rapid policy changes are made to make family practices viable and incentives created to make it attractive, we are in for at least a decade of a severe and progressive family physician shortage — worse in Alberta than elsewhere.  The sad truth is it was avoidable. 

Dr. Troy McKibbin 

Okotoks 

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