Doctors Today and Tomorrow - British Columbia Medical Association

Conclusion
The challenges facing physician workforce planning are not new. However, the complexities of those challenges and
the linkages between them throughout the medical career life cycle have not been fully acknowledged. Minimizing
the cycles of physician surpluses and shortages will require careful consultation and coordination, with particular
attention being paid to the expected impacts of policy throughout the medical career life cycle, the future health
needs of the population, the changing physician demographics, and the individual choices that physicians make about
what, how, and where they practice.
Addressing these challenges ultimately requires leadership and a commitment to change from all parties. The
creation of a provincial multi-stakeholder physician resource planning committee, along with a province-wide
planning framework and workforce database, will form a structured collaborative process to direct and clarify the
physician workforce planning agenda and increase the capacity for physician workforce management. Because no
one community, level of government, university, health care delivery organization, or professional organization can
independently address the challenges in the physician resource sector, meaningful change requires partnerships to
be formed between stakeholders, with the aim of finding cooperative solutions that reconcile, to the degree possible,
competing professional and political ideologies.
Physician resource planning is not solely a technical exercise; it is also a value-driven one. The future need of physicians
is influenced by the political and social choices that underlie the health care system, and how the future role of the
physician is defined. There is no one ideal physician-to-population ratio or optimum number of physicians – other
than the one that fully-informed British Columbians support. By adopting a more collaborative and comprehensive
planning approach, both provincially and nationally, stakeholders can minimize unintended policy impacts, the
mismatch between supply and needs, and costly duplication. This common goal should propel all stakeholders to work
together thoughtfully and collaboratively to improve physician workforce planning, because what we prepare for now
will be what we get later.
Doctors Today and Tomorrow – Conclusion 31