Family doctors in Ontario are pressing the provincial government, demanding a reduction in their daily burdens.

Family doctors in Canada's largest provinces by population (15.8 million people) are demanding, as part of their negotiations with the government, better wages and exemption from administrative paperwork.

Burnout, early retirement, and career redirection: family doctors in Ontario paint a somewhat grim picture of their profession.

"We can no longer endure. And if you think things are bad now, wait two or three more years and you will see that no one wants to go into this branch of medicine," says Dr. Ali Khan Abdullah, a family doctor in the federal capital region of Ottawa.

The Ontario Medical Association (OMA), negotiating with the government on behalf of doctors, speaks of a "perfect storm" to explain the pressures family doctors feel.

Due to a large influx of immigrants and a relatively large number of family doctors retiring, many practicing family doctors suffer from burnout.

Family doctors also complain that their wages are much lower than those of their specialist colleagues, and that their incomes are increasingly eroded by inflation.

"The wages that doctors (family doctors) receive do not keep pace with inflation, which means they do not have the same funding to pay their nurses, support staff, and receptionists," says Kimberly Moran, CEO of the Ontario Medical Association.

The association says that office costs, medical equipment-related costs, and support staff salaries are rising faster than family doctors' wages.

Moreover, the growing wage gap with specialist doctors is causing concern for the Ontario Family Physicians Union.

It is noted that in early March, the Ontario government and the provincial medical association agreed to increase family doctors' salaries by 2.8%, but this will cover only services provided during the 2023-2024 fiscal year.

Family doctors demand relief from administrative burdens, as these increasingly take time away from the time they spend with their patients.

In some weeks, Dr. Abdullah spends nearly half his time filling out various patient forms and handling all kinds of data entry instead of examining patients.

He therefore believes that the Ontario government should simplify, or rather eliminate, some administrative processes, because such a step would help ease waiting lists in the health system, according to him.

Exempting family doctors from writing medical notes to justify a patient's absence from work is one of the family doctors' recommendations.

According to a study conducted by the Ontario Family Physicians Union, family doctors in the province spend an average of 19 hours per week on administrative tasks.

Currently, about 2.2 million people in Ontario do not have a family doctor. This number could rise to 4 million by 2026, according to the province's Family Physicians Union.