The Saskatchewan Medical Association (SMA) is holding its fall representative assembly.

John Gjevre, the President of the SMA, outlined three major concerns.

He said that the biggest concern is around the primary healthcare crisis.

“There is a real challenge in family medicine. Older physicians are starting to retire and reduce their work time, and some are moving away to other areas,” he said. “There is a real lack of family doctors, and many young medical students are deciding for various reasons not to go into family medicine. There is a real demographic challenge with older family physicians and not enough younger residents graduating to replace them.”

As for why younger residents aren’t going into family medicine, it’s a complicated issue.

“I think it’s in the part breadth of knowledge is vast. I think compensation is a challenge. Generally speaking, family physicians are the lowest-paid group of physicians, and I think the hassle of running a practice is a challenge,” he said. “Many family practices are essentially their small business owners, and I don’t think that is as attractive for younger doctors. They want to be in a more regular type of situation.”

Despite the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) entering into its fifth year of existence, Gjevre said that they have yet to be able to finalize any bylaws.

“Essentially the rules or regulations of how physicians and other healthcare practitioners interact with the Saskatchewan Health Authority,” he said. “We are still on the interim bylaws, and we’ve not actually been able to have meetings with the SHA to figure out the rules on how we interact with them. We don’t have final bylaws. That’s an important issue that its key that there are key rules and regulations. These are bylaws to govern how you interact with the health authority, so we have a clear understanding of our responsibilities and SHA’s responsibilities.”

He said that the final topic is physical health and wellness.

“Everybody has been working hard and stressed by this pandemic, and it’s affected people in different ways, but if you look at healthcare workers. It’s caused a lot of strain on healthcare personnel the last two and half years,” he said. “We don’t want physicians to burn out, and then they are not able to do their job, and then we are short even more doctors.”

The fall representative assembly will run Friday and Saturday.