Modernising physician resource planning: a national interactive web platform for Canadian medical trainees

D Bourcier,G Punchhi,S M Tanya,H Molcak,A Dong,M Basu,B W Collins,A P Sayal,S Moolla,M Balas

doi:10.1186/s12913-021-07366-4

Abstract

BackgroundHealthcare systems rely heavily upon human resources to ensure high-quality access to care for the general population. With significant health worker shortages predicted worldwide in the coming decades, maximizing the current workforce by means of a physician resource planning (PRP) strategy that ensures the right number, mix, and distribution of physicians to meet population needs is warranted. In Canada, there is an insufficient number of primary care providers, and disproportionately low numbers of specialist physicians in rural compared to urban regions. Currently, Canadian medical students are not effectively included in PRP strategy and lack the required information for career orientation to help rebalance the population’s workforce needs. This paper present the Health Human Resource (HHR) Platform, a comprehensive web tool that includes relevant workforce data to empower medical students in choosing a discipline based on both personal interests and social accountability.ResultsPhysician workforce data, comments from Canadian residency program directors, and career planning resources were collected by the Canadian Federation of Medical Student’s (CFMS) HHR Task Force. This information was consolidated to create a national interactive platform that uses a map, comparison table, and trend graphs to illustrate over 500,000 unique data points from 37 datasets, including specific information and resources spanning 62 medical specialties from 2015 onwards. There was a 24.6% response rate for program director comments. During the first 4 months of the HHR Platform launch, there were 2434 different users, of which 985 were returning, with an average of 20.0 users per day spending on average 3 min on the platform.ConclusionsThe HHR Platform constitutes a national approach to PRP informing medical students on the mix and distribution of physicians needed to meet the future healthcare demands of the Canadian population.

Highlights

Healthcare systems rely heavily upon human resources to ensure high-quality access to care for the general population
The Health Human Resource (HHR) Platform includes information and resources for 62 specialties with over 500,000 unique numerical data points obtained from 37 datasets
Data summarized in the HHR Platform is from 2015 onwards, with succeeding data added on an annual basis

Summary

Results

The HHR Platform includes information and resources for 62 specialties with over 500,000 unique numerical data points obtained from 37 datasets. In the first 4 months (September 20, 2020, to January 20, 2021) of the HHR Platform being hosted publicly on the CFMS website, there were an average of 20.0 users per day with a total of 2434 different users, of whom 985 returned to the platform. This comprised 24.8% of all CFMS homepage views and 2.9% of all total site pageviews. The first tab displays available program director responses specific to the year, specialty, and jurisdiction selected by the user. The fourth tab displays data sources and other useful information, such as tools that may provide support in interpreting the data or other helpful resources for medical trainees

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