Family medicine was a popular choice among medical graduates in the 1980s, when Roger Strasser was training at The University of Western Ontario. “The residents had almost a missionary zeal that they were going to be family doctors,” he says.
He shared their passion, becoming a family physician. But when he returned to Canada in 2002, after going back to his home country of Australia, “the proportion of graduates choosing family medicine had plummeted,” he says. “It was in the doldrums.”
Strasser was back as the first dean of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, which was created in response to the shortage of family doctors in Northern Ontario.
It was one of many initiatives to boost the attractiveness of family medicine. They seem to have worked – this year, 38% of medical students chose family medicine as their first pick in the residency match, the highest number in 20 years.
“To get to 38 percent was quite something,” says Kathy Lawrence, president of The College of Family Physicians of Canada. Family medicine was the first choice of more than 30 percent of graduates at all but three schools in Canada. Women and international medical graduates were more likely to
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