Marion Moritz, executive director of the clinic, told the Ottawa Sun, "It's a painful decision for us... All the doctors we are recruiting have left for greener pastures. We are bleeding doctors."
Most of the clinic's patients are emergency cases that required sutures and stitches. When its was still running longer hours, the clinic had 185 patients on Sundays, its busiest day of the week. However, when the clinic trimmed Sunday clinic hours from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. patient load had gone down between 120 to 160 people.
But it is not just the operating hours that had been reduced, the number of physicians also went down to 10 from 21 in 1994. Dr. Wayne Nimigan, chair of the clinic's board, explained to the Ottawa Sun, "We are now at the point where we have too few doctors to cover our traditional hours of operation... Should the situation improve, Sunday closures would be revisited, but as things stand we are not sure that even this reduction will make our schedule sustainable over the long term."
Physician shortage has been felt across Canada, expected to worsen in the coming years as fewer youth enroll in medical courses due to the high cost and as graduates opt for better work-life balance by devoting lesser time to clinical practice and more for family and personal concerns.
