NPR’s national current affairs show On Point aired stories of how American doctors are experiencing the consequences of being unable to take care of their patients due to the US’s for-profit health care system.

The main show here: Moral injury in modern medicine and how to heal health care workers (47:06)
Short interview segment here: ‘I could not deliver the care my patients needed’: A doctor’s experience of moral injury (04:53)

The show discusses burnout, doctors leaving medicine, and how the for-profit system traps doctors with non-compete clauses.

Obviously, this is a terrible working environment.

Is there an opportunity to recruit some of these doctors to our system here in Canada? Especially the ones who are thinking of leaving practice.

The follow-up question, do our provincial governments actually want to attract doctors? Seriously, the crisis in family medicine is saving governments money – every person without a family doc is one less person able to access routine healthcare.

We, here in Ontario, know family health teams and group practices are better for patients and for retaining family doctors as practising family docs.

Yet, our governments fail to incentivize this model and create the conditions for its success.