Changes help medical students plan future

Call it a “Sorting Hat” for doctors.

With surveys showing that one in six newly graduated medical specialists in Canada can’t find work, the Canadian Medical Association has produced updated profiles of all 38 medical specialties, from anatomical pathology to urology, to help medical students plot their career paths.

The profiles include special skills required, average number of hours worked per week, including on-call hours, satisfaction with work/life balance and average expected income. Here are some extracts:

Want to be an emergency doctor? This high-pressure, fast-paced job requires “physical and emotional toughness, confidence, composure” and an ability “to treat patients of all ages and a nearly infinite variety of conditions and degrees of illness” — often before even being sure of the diagnosis. Gross take home pay? An average of $325,103.

Anesthesiology requires an “ability to perform under pressure, to think quickly in stressful situations, to use your hands and to work in a team.” Anesthesiologists work in operating rooms, intensive care units, maternity wards and pain clinics. In 2011-12, they grossed, on average, $338,355.

The revised specialty profiles come on the heels of an unprecedented job crunch in a growing number of specialties. According to a Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada employment survey in 2013, 16 per cent of new specialists and sub-specialists reported being unable to secure employment, compared to 7.1 per cent of all Canadians. It’s a situation once unheard of, says Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti, president of the CMA.

Several factors are driving the unemployment and under-employment rate among doctors. New doctors are competing for fewer resources, the college says. Hospitals are cutting beds and operating room time. In addition, many older doctors are postponing retirement.