A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal surveyed 410 emergency physicians and found that 10 percent had left emergency medicine. Among those still working, nearly half had cut their clinical hours, and one in five had taken time off. The emergency room staffing crisis this points to means longer waits for non-urgent problems. True emergencies still belong in the ER, immediately. Everything else now has faster routes.
Key takeaways
41 of 410 surveyed emergency physicians, 10 percent, had left emergency medicine.
Of those who left, 25 moved to another clinical specialty, 10 retired and 6 left clinical medicine altogether. This is not a wave of retirements.
Among the 351 still practising, 48 percent had reduced clinical hours, and 20 percent had taken time off.
65 percent scored high on at least one burnout measure. Women, younger physicians and those who had cut their hours reported the highest levels.
The authors explicitly warn against treating this as leftover pandemic strain.
Median participant age was 41. Just over half practised in Ontario.
The number that matters 1 in 10
10 percent of the 410 emergency physicians surveyed in January 2025 had left emergency medicine, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 7.5 to 13.3 percent.
What did the study actually find?
Researchers with the Network of Canadian Emergency Researchers began following a group of emergency physicians in April 2020 and surveyed them again in January 2025. Of 410 respondents, 41 said they had left emergency medicine. That breakdown matters more than the headline. Ten retired, six left clinical medicine entirely, and 25 moved to a different clinical specialty, which means the majority did not leave medicine. They left the emergency department specifically.
Among the 351 who stayed and completed the full assessment, 170 had reduced their clinical hours, and 69 had taken time away. ER doctor burnout was measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory, and 65 percent scored high on at least one dimension. Participants came from every province and territory except Yukon and Nunavut.
One caution on reading the figure. This is a longitudinal cohort that agreed to be followed, not a census of Canadian emergency physicians, so the 10 percent describes the people surveyed rather than a precise national rate.
Why are they leaving?
Not money, and not the clinical work. Dr. Kerstin de Wit of Kingston Health Sciences Centre and Queen's University, the study's lead author, wrote that the prevailing theme in the responses was a health care system participants described as broken, with the emergency department expected to compensate for shortfalls elsewhere using fewer resources. For many, the future of emergency medicine looked hopeless.
Dr. Kaitlin Stockton, a Vancouver emergency physician and spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, has watched at least five colleagues leave in recent years. She has delivered a cancer diagnosis in a crowded room with almost no privacy, treated a man with bleeding inside his skull while he lay on an ambulance stretcher in a hallway, and cared for a patient who went into septic shock, a life-threatening reaction to infection, after eight hours in a waiting room. She has called it demoralizing to witness patient harm, raise it, and see nothing change.
Dr. James Maskalyk, a Toronto emergency physician, put the mechanism plainly. Organizational problems are the biggest reason people leave, and at the bedside it feels like letting patients down. In a linked CMAJ editorial, deputy editor Dr. Catherine Varner warned that fifty years of building a specialized emergency workforce could be squandered.
What does this mean for your next visit?
The emergency room staffing crisis produces exactly what you would expect from fewer physicians working fewer hours against demand that has not fallen. Longer emergency department wait times, more crowding, and more pressure on the people still on shift. The study's authors are clear that high burnout can affect the quality of care patients receive and create patient-safety risks, which is the part that should concern patients rather than only the workforce.
The pressure is not evenly spread either. Because millions of Canadians have no family doctor, problems that a clinic could have handled early arrive at the ER later and sicker. That pattern is the same one behind how pharmacies are absorbing Canada's wait time crisis, and it is why expanding what pharmacists and paramedics can treat has become a policy lever rather than a footnote.
Where should you actually go?
Knowing this before you are unwell is the whole point, because nobody makes a good routing decision at 2 a.m. with a sick child. The urgent care vs ER question comes down to how quickly something could become dangerous, and the full breakdown of urgent care versus the ER is worth reading before you need it.
Call 911 or go to the ER now for chest pain, stroke signs such as face drooping or sudden weakness or slurred speech, trouble breathing, severe bleeding, a serious injury, or a sudden severe headache. Speed genuinely changes outcomes here.
Urgent care or a walk-in clinic for infections, possible fractures that are not deformed or open, cuts that may need stitches, worsening pain, or a fever that is not settling.
A pharmacist for prescription renewals, minor ailments and, in a growing number of provinces, assessment and prescribing for conditions such as urinary tract infections and pink eye. This is the most underused door in the system, and what your pharmacist wishes you knew covers how much they can actually do.
Check wait times before you leave the house rather than joining the nearest queue by default. A clinic 15 minutes further away can be hours faster.
Bring your medication list and health card. It shortens every visit, wherever you end up going.
What to expect if you do need the ER
You will be triaged rather than seen in arrival order, which is the system working as designed even when it feels unfair. Someone who arrives after you with chest pain will go first. Expect the wait for anything non-urgent to be measured in hours, and expect part of it to happen in a corridor if the department is full.
Go anyway if the reason is genuinely urgent. The staffing problem is real, and it is not a reason to talk yourself out of care for something time-sensitive. It is a reason to use a different door for everything that is not.
Frequently asked questions
How many emergency physicians does Canada have?
Nobody knows precisely, because most physicians work as independent contractors rather than salaried staff, so there is no single payroll to count. Published estimates vary considerably. What the CMAJ study measures is attrition within a followed cohort, not the size of the national workforce.
Is this just leftover strain from the pandemic?
The study's authors specifically caution against that reading. Participants pointed to ongoing organizational conditions, overcrowding, bed shortages and a sense that concerns raised about patient safety produced no change. Those pressures predate 2020 and have not resolved with it.
Does the emergency room staffing crisis mean I should avoid the ER?
No. For a genuine emergency, the ER remains the right and fastest place, and delaying costs more than waiting does. What the emergency room staffing crisis should change is where you take the non-urgent problems that currently fill waiting rooms, because those have faster routes.
Can a pharmacist really treat me instead?
In much of Canada, yes, for a defined list of minor ailments, plus prescription renewals and vaccinations. Scope differs by province and keeps expanding. Asking your pharmacist what they can assess locally takes a minute and often saves an entire afternoon.
Why was I not seen in the order I arrived?
Emergency departments triage by clinical urgency, not arrival time, so patients whose condition could deteriorate quickly are seen first. If your own symptoms worsen while you wait, tell the triage nurse rather than waiting in silence. Your priority level can be changed.
Your next step
Decide your route before you need it. You can check real-time wait times at walk-in clinics and urgent care near you, see what your local pharmacist can treat, or find a family doctor taking patients if you do not have one, which is the single biggest thing that keeps people out of emergency waiting rooms.
This article is general health information, not medical advice. It cannot diagnose you or replace a conversation with a clinician who knows your history. If you are having a medical emergency, call 911.
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