Best to heed doctor’s advice

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/04/2024 (562 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s an iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove opinion piece in today’s Think Tank section.

It’s measured and polite, and it’s written by the president of Doctors Manitoba, Dr. Michael Boroditsky.

In the print edition, it’s on the page opposite this editorial, headlined Gaining more doctors requires team effort.

Dr. Boroditsky writes about the shortage of doctors in the province and the clear risk that the shortage may get worse.

Dr. Boroditsky has a lot of ground to cover in his piece and only so much space to fit all that information in. His op-ed stresses the value of co-operation and is diplomatic in the extreme, as if he’s trying to get the ear of the provincial government in the politest way possible.

But we’re just going to have a look at part of what he’s written: the numbers.

Dr. Boroditsky points out that we have 215 doctors per 100,000 residents in this province, the second lowest in the country. A recent report by Doctors Manitoba, from October 2023, puts the number of physicians in the province at 3,201.

We already do find doctors to come and work here — and to train and stay here — but there’s a larger problem.

“When we look at the doctors we do have in Manitoba, half are planning on retiring, relocating or reducing their clinical hours in the next three years,” Dr. Boroditsky writes.

Just stop and think about that for a moment.

It’s all well and good to argue that there is a strategic plan in place in the budget to recruit all sorts of medical professionals, including 100 new doctors, and that means the government is taking the issue seriously.

But if, at the same time, 1,600 doctors are indicating they are looking at leaving or reducing their levels of service, the combination of addition and subtraction suddenly looks very dire.

Even if those surveyed attitudes are voicing frustration with current medical practice, rather than actually intending on voting with their feet, there’s huge trouble.

Any employer can tell you that retention is cheaper than replacement. It’s far better to keep your skilled and trained staff than it is to try and lure equally qualified replacements. You generally have to pay more, give more inducements and spend time and effort getting new employees up to speed on your processes and practices.

The other thing is that people willing to move to work are often willing and able to move again for better circumstances, leaving you caught in a recruiting cycle all over again.

Put that up against a broad-based physician shortage nationally, and you know that finding new doctors is far harder than investing in keeping the ones you have. Winning a bidding war really only lasts until the next bidding war begins.

It’s early days for the Wab Kinew government, but the growing shortages of medical professionals, and the brutal cascade of increased workloads, job dissatisfaction and the ever-stronger lure of greener pastures that could occur if even a fraction of the doctors talking about leaving actually do, is an immediate and an ever-increasing crisis.

Unlike Doctors Manitoba, we’re not looking for a seat at the table.

We don’t really have to be diplomatic.

The Kinew government may be between a rock and a hard place when it comes to finding scarce health-care resource, while also trying to not break the bank.

But every day without action significantly increases the health risks for Manitobans.

And every doctor we lose makes reducing that risk even harder.

We think Dr. Boroditsky’s piece is well worth reading.

And acting upon.