1 in 10 Canadian emergency doctors have left ERs amid burnout crisis

One in 10 emergency physicians across Canada have left their specialty, according to a study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The research, which tracked doctors from April 2020 through January 2025, also found that 20 per cent took time away from emergency medicine and nearly 50 per cent reduced their clinical hours.

Dr. Kerstin de Wit, an emergency physician at Kingston Health Sciences Centre and Queen's University professor who co-authored the study, said the findings reflect a system under extreme strain. "The prevailing theme was that the health care system is broken," the study authors wrote. "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."

De Wit described the daily reality: "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."

Dr. Catherine Varner, a 15-year emergency room doctor and deputy editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, warned of cascading consequences. "I worry that we're going to continue to see things like waiting room deaths," she said. The study notes that women and younger physicians reported higher rates of burnout than their peers.

For Toronto readers, the crisis hits close: emergency departments across Ontario are already grappling with overcrowding and staffing shortages, directly affecting wait times and care quality at local hospitals.