One in 10 Canadian emergency room doctors are exiting the profession, with many reporting feeling that “the future of emergency medicine was hopeless.”
A Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) study released Monday states that Canadian emergency doctors feel the industry is “broken” and has “no possibility of recovery.”
“Respondents pointed to a broken health care system, unrealistic societal expectations, and insurmountable workplace challenges as reasons for burnout,” the study states. “The consequences were physician distress and leaving the profession. Mechanisms to continue in emergency medicine were reducing work hours, modifying work roles, and changing health care institutions.
Out of 410 respondents, 41 said they left emergency medicine — 25 shifted to a different area of practice, 10 retired and six left clinical medicine, meaning they stopped treating patients altogether.
Also, out of 351 remaining doctors who completed the full survey, 163 of them (46 per cent) scored high on emotional exhaustion and 193 (55 per cent) scored high on depersonalization, a state in which “an individual perceives or experiences a sensation of unreality concerning the self or the environment.”
Nearly half of survey respondents also reported reducing clinical hours, while 20 per cent have reported taking time off.
Dr. Catherine Varner, emergency physician and deputy editor at CAMJ, said what is most worrisome about the findings is that emergency health-care workers “felt not only could they not provide the standards of care, but they felt without any ability to do anything about it.”
“They felt that the systems that they were working in were unable to change.”
In particular, both younger and female participants were noted to experience higher volumes of burnout, a cause of concern that is growing in Canadian health care.
As a result, those positions can become harder to replace or fill.
Get weekly health news
“It’s a huge threat to the workforce,” says Dr. Kerstin de Witt, professor in emergency medicine at Queen’s University.
“If emergency physicians are leaving at the start of their profession, then we lose their entire career of working in the emergency department,” de Witt said.
Wait times in emergency department skyrocketing
One in 10 patients — equaling around 180,000 people — who were admitted to an emergency department in Canada spent more than 48 hours waiting for an inpatient bed in 2024-25, according to a June Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) report.
The data highlighted that many emergency departments across Canada “are facing challenges with overcrowding, staffing shortages, and limited bed and stretcher capacity that have not kept pace with growing demand.”
Older adults and people with chronic conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure are often in the emergency department the longest.
There were 16.1 million visits to emergency departments across Canada in 2024-25, according to CIHI. Twelve per cent of those visits resulted in hospital admission.
Overcrowding was an issue mentioned throughout CAMJ’s study, according to Varner.
“Many of the respondents reported that they were working in emergency departments that were continuously overcrowded, meaning that they didn’t have enough space to work because the departments had too many admitted patients in the care spaces of the emergency department,” she said.
Roughly 15 per cent of the emergency room physicians in Ontario responded to the survey — with the vast majority of those polled reporting issues.
Seventy-four per cent of those who answered said overcrowding was either severe or critical, while 76 per cent said overcrowding affected their ability to provide timely care “on most shifts or nearly every shift.”
There are a number of problems with the system. When the provincial budgets need trimming, education and health are getting the trimming. People using the Emergency Room due to lack of family doctors.Doctors immigrating from other countries are delivering pizza because they can’t get recognized in Canada without redoing med school all over again. There should be a short process to see if they can qualify as doctors.
So many people here blaming immigrants, but what do I see most in ERs? Drunk and drugged up white guys… immigrants aren’t the cause of Canada’s problems.
Overworked nurses because mass immigration has flooded the country with people we cannot accommodate. Then the liberals will import more nurses to solve the problem starting the cycle again. Gotta love the nearsightedness of the liberal party
How many doctors, nurses and healthcare workers got fired because of the mandate in 2021 and never returned.
Not to worry according to a Global article there will be an influx of doctors and nurses from Haiti after the USA stops their protected status in the USA. All those engineers, doctors and nurses will soon be crossing our border into Canada. They will help fill the emergency wards and clinics.
Bob B: truth ! My daughter works in the postpartum unit. Two years ago, a heavily pregnant woman from nigeria boarded a plane with her husband and four children. They all tested positive for covid upon arrival in Calgary. They didn’t speak english, they had no family and no friends here yet they got on a plane and flew here. Once here, the mom went into labor and had more difficulties than imaginable. All kinda of issues resulting in a c-section. Mom was in ICU for weeks, baby in NICU for weeks. The invoice was over $2M. When mom was discharged, they disappeared. Whether into the community or back on a plane. Meanwhile, we have to cover their costs. This is a very common occurrence.
I was at the children’s hospital in Calgary last week. In the waiting room, I saw two families, both with children that had minor i juries, a sore wrist, a sore foot. Neither family spoke any english, none of them. The one family, dad shows his $2000 phone to the triage nurse and says “refugee lady”. I understand someone was on the phone who could translate. I then saw that same family get into a brand new jeep grand Cherokee and drive away. How? As a canadian, my phone isn’t worth $2000 and my vehicle is 14 years old.
This is coast to coast – so stop blaming a premier for a partisan shot. It is the system. No alternative after 5 PM till 9 AM or Sunday & holidays. And your doctor will give you an appointment in 2 wks. a blended system, like Europe would allow off hours clinics for fees & income for entrepreneurial health teams. Emergency would be for heart, stroke, car crashes & real emergency care Throwing more money won’t work – system change will.
Ok. Sojdndisoakndisown
Luckily I am a wealthy Canadian so go to the USA for all my healthcare and treatments. Elbows Up Canada!
This is silly willy dilly dally flippy floppy tippy dippy, how’s my canuck voters doing?
What efforts to redress this situation can only be viewed as in the bandaid category. This has been happening over many years while politicians ignored it and/or blamed someone else.
There probably are ways to reduce some costs. It’s going to take a concerted effort to resolve it, including, very likely, a tax to assist and maintain the service.
Just have to find some brave pragmatic politicians and enough public support to give rather than take.
If you have visited a hospital or had any specialized medical treatment recently you will realize how broken our Healthcare system has become we can only blame the provincial NDP and Federal Liberals for this debacle.
Even temporary foreign workers & foreign students get free health care not to mention all refugees who arrive with years of neglected medical issues all of which overload our Healthcare system.
Blame that pos Trudeau
Too many immigrants
This is a very dangerous cycle. Burnt-out doctors leave thus putting even more stress on the remaining doctors who then leave….
The only way to stop this is to recruit more doctors from around the world, whatever the cost (within reason, of course). If they aren’t fluent in English, hire an accompanying nurse who is fluent in both languages to translate.
The alternative is a complete collapse of our emergency medical system with more deaths and exploding costs due to not treating problems in a timely manner.
This is literally “A matter of life and death.”
You can blame open borders to anyone. Immigrants bringing in their elderly grandparents and parents that probably never saw a family doctor in their country. Not rocket science just common sense. Close the borders no more immigration until or if ever Canada can ever afford it.
The ER docs I work with make more in one 8 hour shift than I take home in an entire month. Money certainly isn’t everything, but nobody is better resourced to deal with the stress of an ER in a healthy fashion.
We are being run into the ground by MORONS
NO CONFIDENCE
@pissed
Ever worked in healthcare? In any capacity?
I would shut it, you have no idea the workload, the short staffed shifts, the lack of funds, or the stress that comes with working in healthcare…..in most cases they are woefully underpaid.
Most ER doctors make 300k+ a year, if you aren’t happy almost 6xing the average Canadians wage, maybe you should move elsewhere. Imagine not being happy being able to afford a new home every year.
And no one wants to talk about the reason for this. In 2024 Canada’s population grew by one million in just that year alone. Most of this growth was threw immigration. The health care system tries to maintain one doctor for every 1000 people so it is obvious that we didn’t add 1000 doctors in one year. Also we have had a wave of asylum seekers and sponsored immigrants that will not ever pay taxes that funds the health care system. This isn’t rocket science people.
Trudeau and Carney have not been paying their share and have been shortchanging Provincial Healthcare Systems for over a decade.
This exiting all has to do with legalization of THC weed.
See below.
Add this to the pile: Global News
Posted June 9, 2026-
$200,000,000 is owed to BCHA by foreign tourists not paying bills.
Fraser Health: $94,595,000 (approx. $95.6 million reported in regional is owed. Fraser Valley eh? You know, family or friends come here deliberately when sick and go straight into ER wards.
My doctor friend who works at SHM told me that everyday multiple times someone’s grandmother or great uncle is in ER with decades old untreated illnesses, no health insurance or coverage and basically then they get up and leave the country when discharged.
Or some PR brings in his wife four kids and then both sets of parents and grandparents. That’s two working adults putting 12 dependants on the system.
$200,000,000!!!
Amazing how unfettered immigration can affect a country…..now imagine living in UK!?
Don’t forget to thank a Liberal! This new utopia that THEY created just keeps getting better and better…
Well, maybe we should invest more money into our healthcare system then, instead of letting short-sighted Premiers like Ford sell it for scraps. We will never sort out overcrowding or doctor shortages through privatization, no one wants to pay $300 for some stitches or a broken arm. We’re not America.
The liberals’ mass importation of people from elsewhere to drive up real estate and drive down wages sure didn’t help.