Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

The acute shortage of primary care physicians (PCPs) in Saskatchewan is a significant impediment to the promotion and maintenance of good health for provincial residents. An abundance of quantitative literature illustrates high rates of stress amongst PCPs yet little qualitative knowledge exists to reveal the complex issues that underpin the experience of front line Canadian physicians. My research question "How do primary care physicians find meaning in their work?" will explore how PCPs manage stress and burnout while creating meaning and balance in their work. My objectives are to investigate: (1) PCPs' meaning-making strategies; (2) how social factors such as gender, age and ethnicity influence meaning-making; and (3) how contextual factors such as rural/urban location and type of practice affect meaning. Describing how PCPs create meaning will provide health policy makers, medical educators and regional health managers with knowledge and strategies pertinent to physician training, recruitment and retention. Practicing PCPs may adapt these approaches in their work situations. Suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, and divorce among physicians reveal considerable suffering and loss of human capital. This represents a major loss to Canadian society, the health care system, to PCPs and their families. Gender inequality, physician location, and issues of ethnicity add complexity to the problem. Even as the numbers of female medical school graduates increase, concerns about gender equity and the full involvement of female physicians continue. PCPs in rural or northern communities have additional stresses that compound job difficulties. Efforts to recruit practicing physicians and medical graduates to assume rural postings continue to fall short of meeting the demand. Despite the contextual knowledge gained from quantitative research, there remains a significant gap in a qualitative understanding of the experiences of PCPs as they are influenced by various social factors.