A national survey suggests Canada's emergency departments are continuing to lose physicians as burnout, overcrowding and staffing pressures take a growing toll on front-line health-care workers.
The findings come as hospitals across Ontario face ongoing strain in their emergency rooms, including in Barrie. Last week, Queen's Park announced more than a billion dollars in funding aimed at helping meet rising demand in hospital emergency departments, including at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Barrie.
Researchers found that one in 10 emergency physicians has left the specialty, while many of those still working are reducing their hours or taking time away from clinical practice to cope with workplace pressures.
The study, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, surveyed more than 400 emergency medicine physicians from across the country.
Physicians report high levels of burnout
Nearly half of the respondents said they had reduced their clinical hours. Another 20 per cent reported taking time off, while 10 per cent said they had left emergency medicine altogether.
Women and younger physicians reported higher rates of burnout than other groups.
The research was conducted by the Network of Canadian Emergency Researchers and co-authored by Dr. Kerstin de Wit, an emergency physician at Kingston Health Sciences Centre and professor at Queen's University.
"The prevailing theme was that the [health-care] system is broken," de Wit and her colleagues wrote.
Researchers concluded that high levels of physician burnout can affect the quality of care patients receive and create risks for patient safety. They also cautioned against viewing the issue as solely a lingering effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Front-line doctors describe overcrowded conditions
Dr. Kaitlin Stockton, a Vancouver emergency physician and spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, said the findings reflect what doctors are experiencing every day.
Stockton recalls delivering a cancer diagnosis to a patient in a crowded, noisy room with little privacy. She has also treated a patient suffering from an intracranial brain bleed while they remained on an ambulance stretcher in a hallway.
One case continues to stay with her.
She described a patient who arrived in septic shock after waiting eight hours in an emergency department waiting room and came dangerously close to dying.
Stockton says experiences like those have become increasingly common and can leave lasting effects on medical staff.
At least five of her colleagues have left emergency medicine in recent years.
"It's demoralizing" for doctors to witness patient harm and repeatedly raise concerns without seeing meaningful changes, she said.
"We're seeing this alarming exodus of health-care workers across the country," she said.
"And these are not people that are nearing retirement. These are people that are three, five, 10 years out from school that are leaving emergency medicine, leaving hospital-based medicine or actually leaving medicine altogether — because they can no longer sustain this job and still maintain their own well-being."
Questions remain about the size of the workforce
Researchers noted there are no definitive numbers showing exactly how many emergency physicians are currently working regular shifts in Canadian emergency departments.
The latest figures from the Canadian Institute for Health Information show there were approximately 2,250 emergency family medicine physicians and nearly 1,500 emergency medicine physicians across Canada in 2024.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians estimates there may be roughly 6,000 emergency physicians nationwide, although that figure does not account for how many are actively working regular ER hours.
Survey respondents came from every province and territory except Yukon and Nunavut.
The findings add to growing concerns about staffing challenges in emergency departments as hospitals continue to grapple with rising patient volumes, extended wait times and limited capacity.
