For the past two years, Wawa’s emergency room has been struggling to stay open with just three full-time doctors, down from the six or seven the hospital would typically expect to have on staff.  

The situation is set to get even worse for the community on the banks of Lake Superior. In September, the hospital will be down to just two full-time doctors: Dr. Anjali Oberai and her husband. 

“It’s physically exhausting,” Dr. Oberai says of the struggle to keep Wawa’s ER open and properly staffed.   

While Wawa’s ER hasn’t been forced to close thanks to physicians working on temporary contracts (locums) doctors have been asked to divert patients to other hospitals because of staffing issues. 

The problem in Northern Ontario is that the nearest hospital can be hours away. The closest major ER to Wawa is in Sault Ste Marie, roughly 230 kilometers south. “We can't be asking patients with life-threatening injuries or illnesses to be traveling 200 kilometers to the next emergency [room],” Dr. Oberai says.  

The strain on Wawa’s ER has ripple effects for the community’s primary care services. In rural Ontario, the same doctors staff both family medical offices and emergency rooms. And when hospitals are short-staffed, it is primary care that suffers, Dr. Oberai says, as physicians cancel clinic hours in order to pick up shifts in the ER.  

“I think that reflex is to reduce access to primary care in order to have the emergency [room] covered,” she says. “Downstream that it’s really going to negatively affect population health and the health of our patients overall.” 

In the nearly 30 years that Oberai has been a practising physician, she has found it getting harder to recruit family doctors to Northern Ontario. Dr. Oberai thinks family medicine needs more support, money and structural change — not just for doctors but for nurse practitioners, nurses and everyone who works in primary care. “We know this,” she says, “but it’s just hard to move the needle.” 

 This situation is tenuous and unsustainable, but it doesn’t have to be this way. A rapid response from government and healthcare leaders could help to stabilize the current crisis. Ontario College of Family Physicians (OCFP) and the OMA Section on General & Family Practice (SGFP) are calling for: 

• Immediately enhance locum program supports to ensure temporary doctors are available where they are most needed right now. Longer-term rethinking of how locums are used in the North is necessary. 
• Urgently fund recruitment programs to bring new physicians to the North. 
• Retention is critical. Implement a comprehensive strategy and ensure positive working conditions to retain the remaining physicians in the North. 
• Provide immediate peer support for family doctors working in these difficult conditions to maintain their mental health and wellbeing. 

 Read our full statement here.