It’s no secret that emergency rooms across Canada can often be slammed with patients seeking treatment, but a new study has found that one in 10 physicians have recently stopped working in emergency departments amid broader concerns about the state of the health care system. The startling finding was revealed in a study published on Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Research began in April 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and three follow-up surveys were conducted in November 2020, September 2022, and January 2025.
“The prevailing theme was that the health care system is broken. We found repeated references to the emergency department making up for system inadequacies, with fewer resources and little support, and the expectation that the situation will worsen,” the study authors wrote. “For many, the future of emergency medicine was hopeless with no possibility of recovery.
Participants commented on a lack of accountability at every level of health care institution. Anger was directed toward hospital and political leaders, and occasionally toward patients.” Related: New report highlights burnout of Ontario hospital staff amid employee shortages Dr. Kerstin de Wit, a study co-author who works as an emergency department physician and is a Queen’s University professor, said the 2025 survey showed 10 per cent of respondents left the emergency medicine profession, 20 per cent took time away from emergency medicine, and nearly 50 per cent reduced clinical hours.
“I wasn’t very surprised because I see it every day in my own experiences of working shifts and among my colleagues,” she told CityNews, adding there have been high levels of burnout reported. “We’re all working more shifts than we’re actually supposed to be doing because we’re always short of physicians and our nurses are always short of nurses. We’re frequently staying long past the end of our shift to try and see as many patients as we can.
“We’re feeling a lot of distress because we see patients who are really sick, often in the waiting room for up to maybe even 12 hours before we’re able to see them, and that distresses us greatly because we feel we’re not doing a good job and we’re not providing any help to these patients.” Related: Some Ontario hospitals offering hefty incentives for locums amid doctor shortage Dr. Catherine Varner, a 15-year emergency room doctor an…
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