Is there enough medical school seats yet?

[Guest FastEddy]

Hi everyone,

Come September 72 new seats with be ready for first year med students in BC, bringing the number of spots to ~200. I was wondering if that is anywhere near enough to sustain the physician numbers in BC, offsetting the loss to other provinces and retirement?

Does anyone know the trend in the number of doctors in the province (increasing, decreasing)? How many are practicing in BC right now?

Ta,

-Edo

[Guest coastal79]

I read that, prior to the expansion of UBC, as a province we were only producing 25% of the physicians that we needed to replace those that were leaving and retiring. Plus, we'd need more residency spots, not just medical school seats (although I believe they expanded residencies for next year also).

 

Cheers

[Guest 4EverRose]

Hi FastEddy,

 

The news this morning actually mentioned that we will be short of surgeons (especially orthopedic surgeons) pretty soon when a lot of the surgeons in their fifties will be retiring in the near future. I roughly recall that the news mentioned 400 is the number of med student spots we need in order to sustain adequate health care delivery.

 

Regarding the number and trend of doctors in BC and other provinces/territories, please refer to the documents in the following Canadian Medical Association web site (it has a lot of other interesting stats too!):

 

www.cma.ca/cma/menu/displ.../index.htm

 

One of the PDFs is "Number of physicians by province/territory and specialty, Canada, 2003" and I think it will answer your question (and you can access further historical data as well).

 

Cheers!

[Guest FastEddy]

thanks a lot coastal and 4everrose, it appears the expansion currently in the works is just the beginning of what needs to be done to solve this problem.

That link helps a lot.

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

During the UBC interview last week, my Vancouver-area interviewer (an MD) noted that there is a shortage of both, GPs and psychiatrists, at a minimum, in BC.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen