According to the 2001 National Family Physician Workforce Survey conducted by the College of Family Physicians of Canada, 79% of general practitioners and family physicians work in a private office or clinic, and 73% have a private office or clinic as their main practice setting. Another 7% list a community clinic or community health centre as their main practice setting, and 7% work mainly in hospital emergency departments. Twenty-four percent of GP/FPs spend some time practising in nursing homes or homes for the aged, but only about 1% state that this is their main practice setting.
A large majority of GP/FPs offer chronic disease management (91%), psychotherapy (89%) and other mental health care (83%). Three-quarters provide some palliative care, and 58% provide sports medicine services. More than one-third (36%) do some surgical assisting, and 2% perform major in-hospital surgery.
GP/FPs work an average of 52.1 hours per week, exclusive of call. Those GP/FPs who take call (74%) have an average of 24.1 on-call work hours per week. Overall, 16% of GP/FPs provide obstetrical call, 46% do call for patients in hospital and 21% do emergency department call.
In the 2 years prior to the survey, 13% of GP/FPs had changed their scope of practice by specializing within an area of family medicine, 40% had decreased their scope of practice and 15% had expanded it. — Shelley Martin, Senior Analyst, CMA Research, Policy and Planning Directorate
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