Unfilled residency spots suggest 'there is no Alberta advantage,' says AMA president

The president of the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) is calling the number of unfilled family physician residency spots in the province "unprecedented."

After the second round of matching, 20 family medicine spots remain open in Alberta, making it the second year that 20 or more positions have gone unfilled.

"The numbers speak for themselves. They scream, 'There is no Alberta advantage.'" AMA president Dr. fred Rinaldi said. "[They're] saying that learners here and learners elsewhere choose not to come to Alberta."

Data from the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS), shows all family medicine residency spots were filled from 2018-2021. In 2022, 11 spots were unfilled after the second round and 22 spots remained empty in 2022.

In a Thursday letter released on the AMA website, Rinaldi said the 2023 CaRMS matches are a sign that family medicine in Alberta is not being seen as a sustainable and attractive specialty.

"B.C., Manitoba, Saskatchewan all were fully matched," Rinaldi said. "They all have programs in place to incentivize physicians to stay there."

Years of conflicts between physicians and the UCP government have affected how graduating doctors view the province, said Rinaldi.

"They saw a contract torn apart, they've seen us try to negotiate. They've seen us try to explain to government that this is a crisis situation and they've seen nothing happen," Rinaldi added.

Premier Danielle Smith responded to the letter Friday and agreed that "more action is needed."

"We have $2 billion that we are investing in primary care. We've expanded out our residency spaces, we're expanding out our spaces to train more medical doctors," Smith said. "We're reducing the barriers across the country to be able to attract more doctors from the rest of the country. We're also working on international recruitment and foreign credentials recognition."

Ministry of Health spokesperson Scott Johnston said $113 million is being spent by the province to increase the number of residency training spaces for new doctors, but Rinaldi said more spots don't help the shortage if existing spaces are already left empty.

"If nobody is filling positions now, who is going to be working to teach those people?" Rinaldi asked. "And if the climate doesn't change, who will be around to attend those positions?

"It does little good to educate more people in Alberta to find out that they're all leaving to go somewhere else."

Saba Riaz, vice president external of the University of Alberta Medical Students' Association, said she's not surprised at the number of family medicine vacancies despite neighbouring provinces successfully attracting residents.

"There are an alarmingly high number of family physicians that I've met and worked with, that my friends have worked with, and they say if they were to go back, they wouldn't choose family medicine again," Riaz said. "They're more overworked, they're underappreciated and they feel like their position is not being treated as a priority."

Student physicians look to practicing physicians to inform their decisions when choosing a specialty, she added, and the feedback she's heard from family doctors – including her mother – is steering students away from the practice.

"The negative experiences that she's had, it definitely informed my choices and it's one of the reasons I ended up not going into family medicine. So there's been a lot of discontentment among a lot of family doctors in recent years, and I think it's one of the reasons you see the outcome that you do."

Johnston said the Alberta government is working with the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary to fill remaining positions through a "post-matching process with Alberta-based international medical graduates."

He also said $158 million from the 2023 budget will go to a Health Workforce Strategy "aimed at having the workforce in place to deliver the health services Albertans need today and in the future."

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Jessica Robb