Health New med school for family doctors aims to help solve the shortage

The people behind a year-old medical school dedicated solely to turning out family doctors say the small program based in Oshawa, Ont., is disrupting traditional medical education in a way that could help solve Canada's shortage of family physicians.

"The big idea here is to preselect a group of students who not only want to become doctors, but they want to become family doctors, and right from the outset to surround them with all the wonders of family medicine," said Dr. Jane Philpott, dean of Queen's University's Faculty of Health Sciences and a former federal health minister.

The first 20 students in the Queen's-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program began their studies in September 2023. The school is a partnership between Queen's University, which also operates a traditional medical school at its main location in Kingston, Ont., and Lakeridge Health hospital in Durham Region, just east of Toronto. The satellite campus is located right in the hospital.

But critics say that while it's a good initiative, the effort is a drop in the bucket and that solutions to the overwhelming primary care shortage lie elsewhere — from training more nurse practitioners to removing barriers for foreign-trained doctors.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/family-doctor-medical-school-1.7328500

We should be doing this here but I;m sure the AMA would object