The anesthesia human resources crisis in Canada

Human resources are essential to the safe and effective functioning of any health care system. Pressure on the health care workforce is of active global concern. There appears to be an anesthesia service delivery crisis in Canada. Recent media headlines have featured vacant physician anesthesiologist positions, closure of maternity units, and postponement of elective surgeries because of a shortage of anesthesiologists. This shortage is most serious in rural and remote communities. This has prompted the Canadian Anesthesiologists' Society to publish a position statement on "Strategies to Address the Surgical Backlog and Health Human Resource Issues in Anesthesia."In this article, we discuss the composition and organization of the anesthesia workforce in Canada. We compare the Canadian anesthesia workforce to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. We contend that the current anesthesia provision model in Canada is not meeting population needs and outline potential solutions to the anesthesia human resources crisis. These include increasing the numbers of anesthesiologists in training, encouraging international medical graduates to migrate to Canada, and various different approaches to task shifting and task sharing.