College of Family Physicians backs down on third year of training amid outcry
College of Family Physicians backs down on third year of training amid outcry
This is good news. Virtually no one aside from the college wanted this change. Medical education is long enough and we don't need more barriers to becoming family physicians. In the wild old days of GPs you could practice after just a year of internship.
I think there is some value in that general practitioners need to know a little bit about a very broad spectrum of things and some new practitioners feel overwhelmed at the start of their practice, but I agree, it's incredibly bad timing, and shouldn't be done without some other adjustment to offset the increase in training time.
Like, we know standardized tests are poor at predicting future performance as a physician, and interviews can introduce a plethora of biases unless they're very deliberately structured, yet we still use both of these as major checkpoints of medical school admission. And they're not just a historical lingering standard, the University of Saskatchewan only implemented the requirements for a four-year undergraduate degree and the MCAT for med school admission in 2013. Anecdotally, the few physicians who got in without an undergraduate before the change was implemented in my wife's class ended up being top of their class.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) says it has heard the concerns of doctors across the country who opposed plans for a third year of training, originally scheduled to start in 2027.
"We have ceased the implementation of the third year in family medicine residency training and will undertake a comprehensive review of this decision," newly elected CFPC president Dr. Michael Green wrote in a statement.
More than 91 per cent of the 2,775 physicians registered to vote at the CFPC's annual membership meeting Nov. 1 approved a motion to "immediately cease the implementation of the third year in family practice program," establish an independent review committee to present recommendations, and then decide what to do, based on evidence.
Family doctors already have the option of adding a third year to focus training on a specific area of practice, and all physicians do continuing education throughout their careers.
At a time when one in five Canadians don't have a family physician, there is concern an extra year of training would make the shortage even worse.
Yash Verma, a first-year medical student at the University of Toronto, said he and many of his classmates are happy with the decision to halt the third year.
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