Canadian Family Physician

Lorsque j’ai commencé ma première suppléance à Owen Sound (Ontario), je ne pouvais pas croire la quantité de travail dans les coulisses dont mon précepteur m’avait protégé durant la résidence. L’infirmière praticienne m’apportait régulièrement des tâches à faire entre les rendez-vous, comme des renouvellements d’ordonnances, des interventions préventives et des formulaires à remplir pour des patients sans rendez-vous que je n’ai jamais rencontrés durant cette année comme suppléant.

Le monde de la recherche s’anglicise depuis plusieurs décennies. Les publications en anglais représenteraient aujourd’hui de 85 % à 98 % de la production scientifique mondiale1,2. Bien qu’elle soit la langue première d’environ 5 % de la population globale3,4, l’anglais fait office de lingua franca en communication scientifique5,6. Ce contexte donne lieu à la création de programmes universitaires en anglais dans plusieurs pays officiellement non anglophones5,7.

Case You are about to see Mrs Smith, a 92-year-old patient diagnosed with diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure, osteoporosis, Alzheimer disease, and chronic kidney failure. After 3 hospitalizations, she has been transferred to a facility with 24-hour care. Every month, you have been remotely monitoring her symptoms and laboratory test results while adjusting her 12 medications.

When I was in residency, I assumed leadership was something I would grow into later—after more years in practice, more confidence, and fewer unanswered questions. Like many new family physicians, I heard a familiar refrain: focus on clinical competence first; leadership and advocacy can wait. But early in practice, I discovered that many of the challenges shaping my patients’ health could not be addressed solely within the examination room.

Case description Gerald is a 74-year-old male widower who lives 20 minutes outside of town. He takes a diuretic for hypertension and has moderate chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but has had no acute exacerbations in the past year. He uses a combination long-acting muscarinic antagonist (LAMA) and long-acting β2-agonist (LABA) daily. He has no Internet access at home and no family in town, but uses a landline telephone to talk to his daughter every other day.

Cela fera bientôt deux ans que je suis chef de la direction du Collège des médecins de famille du Canada (CMFC) et j’aimerais m’attarder sur une question que j’ai entendue plusieurs fois : « Pourquoi as-tu accepté ce poste compte tenu des difficultés que connaît le Collège? » Je savais qu’il y avait des défis à relever et que le CMFC n’avait pas toujours été aussi en phase avec ses membres qu’il aurait dû l’être.

I’m approaching 2 years as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), and I want to reflect on a recurring question: “Why did you take this job, considering the College is struggling a bit?” I knew there were challenges, and the CFPC had not always connected with membership as it should. When I mentioned these questions to my wife, she said, “It makes sense to me why you took this job.” She’s right, of course.

Across Canada, communities are struggling to recruit and retain family physicians1 but occasionally we hear a story that offers hope. On a recent episode of the Family Medicine Matters2 podcast, I spoke with Dr Johnny Chang, Chief of Staff at Creston Valley Hospital in Creston, a rural community in British Columbia. Just 2 years ago, Creston faced possible closure, and poor access to primary care. Today, Creston expects to welcome 7 new family physicians by 2027. What changed?

In a recent resident teaching clinic, I was surprised to hear a resident recommend a dose of 81 mg of acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) daily to a patient for prevention of preeclampsia. The resident accurately identified a patient for whom low-dose ASA would be indicated for this purpose, but the dose recommended was not consistent with the standard of care being practised by obstetrical care providers at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Ont.

Thank you for publishing the article, “Anti-Black racism in Canadian clinical tools. Ending race-based correction”1 in the February 2026 issue of Canadian Family Physician. It had relevance in our home. My husband is a person of African descent who has ancestors from Guyana and the dual-island nation of St Kitts and Nevis. As a middle-aged man whose father died too young of prostate cancer, my husband sees his family physician yearly, and receives annual blood tests, including creatinine tests.