Dear Members,
40 days of patient feedback!
For the next 40 days, we invite all Albertans currently using the health care system to share their stories about the care they received in 2024. We are conducting one of the largest patient experience surveys in the country, and we need your help to complete it by April 15.
We began our survey with PatientsFirst.ca, our online community of over 61,000 Albertans. Already, nearly 23,000 people have completed the survey! To hear from even more Albertans, we would like to offer the survey through physician practices, making it available to all patients currently in the system, from family medicine to acute care settings.
Please encourage your patients to take this quick and easy survey. To help spread the word, we have a poster available with a QR code to access the survey. If posters aren’t suitable for your practice, you can share this link.
The results will be publicly released in the AMA’s first annual Report Card: The State of Health Care in Alberta, planned for this spring. We need data for our advocacy toward informed reform and evidence-based government policy.
CaRMS Round 1 2025, medical student uncertainty
Round 1 of CaRMS 2025 has been announced and I am concerned about recruitment and retention of physicians.
In 2024, we saw modest improvements in the CaRMS match numbers, giving us hope for even better outcomes this year. Certainly, there are some positive notes. It’s promising, for example, to see that rural programs in Medicine Hat and Lethbridge are doing well in 2025.
However, there are still 26 unmatched family medicine positions in Alberta, compared to only a few unfilled positions in other provinces.
Additionally, recent surveys of medical students at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary have provided new insights. Notably, 40% of current medical students are uncertain about staying in Alberta after their residency. Their primary concerns include:
- unstable state of health care and medicine (36%)
- financial concerns (31%)
- residency and curriculum challenges (29%)
- mental health and work-life balance struggles (20%)
Then consider that Budget 2025 establishes a massive shortfall by failing to account for population growth, inflation and patient complexity. There is also no funding for acute care stabilization, leaving these critical services at risk. The health care system is plagued by uncertainty, massive change and controversy.
These are the kind of issues that will occupy the Representative Forum when we meet next week in Calgary. I'll provide more updates soon, including continuing efforts to salvage the Physician On-Call Program.
Sincerely,
Shelley Duggan, MD, FRCPC
President, Alberta Medical Association