Healthcare · Helping & Teaching
Family physician: what the job actually is
The doctor most people see first, who works out what is going on, treats what they can and coordinates the rest across a whole life.
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The work
What this job actually is
- A medical doctor who looks after the general health of patients of all ages over a long period: illnesses, injuries, chronic conditions, prevention and referrals to specialists.
- Many visits are short and varied. A child with a rash, an adult with chest pain, an older person whose medication list needs reviewing, someone who is anxious and cannot say why.
- You are often the first point of contact and the person who sees the whole picture, so a lot of the skill is deciding what is serious and what is not.
- A great deal of the work is not medicine. It is notes, forms, referral letters, test results, phone calls and billing.
- Job Bank lists offices of physicians and hospitals as the main employers, and shows that a large share are self-employed, which in practice means running a clinic as a small business.
A Tuesday
What a normal day looks like
Not a good day or a bad one. The ordinary version, which is what you would actually be living.
- 7:30 — Review test results from yesterday and decide which need a phone call today.
- 8:30 — The first patients. Fifteen-minute slots that seem to be ten minutes of content and five of everything else.
- 10:00 — A patient with a complicated problem and a short appointment. You make a plan, then book a follow-up because there is not enough time.
- 11:30 — A frightened parent with a feverish child. You examine, reassure and give clear instructions about when to come back.
- 12:30 — Lunch at the desk, with referral letters and forms for company.
- 13:30 — Afternoon clinic. A patient has bad news to be told; you set aside the time you need.
- 15:30 — Phone calls to specialists, pharmacies and patients. None of it is billed in the way the work feels.
- 17:00 — The last patient, then charts. The clinic day finishes before the paperwork does.
- 18:30 — Home, possibly with more charting still to do.
- 20:00 — You are thinking about a patient you are worried about. That is common.
Honestly
Who loves this, and who should not do it
The second list is the useful one. Nearly every careers page leaves it out, which is why nearly every careers page reads like an advert.
- You are curious about people and about how bodies and minds work, and you do not mind admitting what you do not know.
- You are comfortable making decisions with incomplete information, and being responsible for them.
- You like variety and the continuity of knowing patients over years.
- You can communicate clearly and kindly with all kinds of people, in short appointments.
- You are willing to commit many years to training before you earn the title.
- You dislike the length of the route. Medical school admission is highly competitive, and there are years of study and training before you practise independently.
- Student debt worries you. Medical education is expensive, and the training years are long.
- You do not want the emotional load. You will deliver bad news, see suffering and carry responsibility for decisions, and burnout is a recognised risk.
- You dislike paperwork and administration. A large part of the week is notes, forms and results.
- You want to avoid being a small-business owner. Many family doctors are self-employed, and running a clinic involves staff, billing and overhead.
- Call, long hours and unpredictable workloads bother you. Hours often extend beyond clinic time.
The route in
How you actually get there in Ontario
Aim for a strong undergraduate degree
The University of Toronto's MD programme says undergraduate applicants must complete at least three years of study toward a Canadian bachelor's degree, with a minimum GPA of 3.6 on the OMSAS scale and a note that 3.8 is considered competitive. It also requires the MCAT with a threshold score in each section, and specific prerequisite courses. Other Ontario schools set their own requirements, so check each one.Get into and complete medical school
Ontario has six medical schools: McMaster, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Ottawa, Queen's, Toronto and Western. Applications go through a central service, and every school sets its own criteria. Admission is competitive, and many applicants do not get in on the first try.Complete postgraduate family medicine training
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) requires, for an independent practice certificate, a medical degree, Parts 1 and 2 of the Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination or an acceptable alternative, postgraduate training and certification by examination by the College of Family Physicians of Canada or the Royal College. The length of the family medicine residency is not stated on that page, so ask a medical school or the College of Family Physicians of Canada for the current figure.Get your licence and choose how to practise
The CPSO grants the medical licence. Family doctors then work in family health teams, community health centres, group practices or their own clinics. Job Bank's outlook notes that demand may be greater in rural and northern communities of Ontario.
Where this comes from: CPSO — Independent practice certificate requirements · University of Toronto MD Program — Academic requirements
The money
What it pays in Ontario
Job Bank's own figures, quoted rather than summarised, with the period they describe — so you can tell how old they are and go and check them.
- $84,266
- Low (a year)
- $233,752
- Median (a year)
- $451,418
- High (a year)
Ontario, NOC 31102. Reference period 2023-2024, last updated by Job Bank on 19 November 2025. Wages vary a lot by region inside Ontario and by how long you have been doing it — the low figure is roughly where you start, not what the job is worth. Job Bank reports this one by the year rather than by the hour, because the income is commission and the hours behind it are nothing like fixed.
Where it is heading
The outlook for the next three years
Job Bank publishes a three-year outlook for every job in every province. It is the closest thing to an honest forecast, and it moves, so read it as a weather report rather than a verdict.
Good4 out of 5 stars
- Employment growth will lead to several new positions.
- A moderate number of positions will become available due to retirements.
- There are a small number of unemployed workers with recent experience in this occupation.
What that rating means: how many openings Job Bank expects in Ontario for this kind of work against how many people are likely to be looking — not whether it is a good job. A “limited” rating means more competition for each opening; it does not close the door, and it can change before you are ready to walk through it.
What is changing in this work
- Increased need for health care services to support the growing and aging population in Ontario
- Greater demand on the health care system because of the backlog of medical procedures and patient care needs
- Investments in health care facilities
- Demand may be greater in rural and northern communities of Ontario
Who hires for it
- Offices of physicians
- Hospitals
- 31,350
- people work in this job in Ontario
- 49%
- are women (48% across all jobs)
- 65%
- are self-employed (15% across all jobs)
Source: Job Bank — General practitioners and family physicians job prospects in Ontario (NOC 31102). Outlook updated by Job Bank on 10 December 2025; read by us on 5 October 2026.
Before you leave school
Things you can do now
- Take the highest sciences and maths you can manage well. Grades matter at every stage of this route, from the first university year onwards.
- Do community involvement hours in a health setting, such as a hospital volunteer programme or a seniors' home, if your age allows.
- Read the academic requirements page for one Ontario medical school. It will tell you what your university years need to include.
- Ask a family doctor's office whether the doctor would answer two questions by email. Be brief and specific.
Test it
Do this before you decide anything
Reading about a job tells you almost nothing. This is designed to be done alone, this week, for free.
Find out what the long road looks like before you start it
About 75 minutes- Read the University of Toronto MD academic requirements page and the CPSO requirements page. Write the whole route in order, from today to a licence, in your own words.
- Watch two day-in-the-life talks from Canadian family doctors and write down what they say about paperwork, hours and continuity.
- Sit with the list and ask honestly: which step do I dread most, and which do I look forward to?
- Email or phone one family medicine clinic and ask whether the doctor would answer two questions about the job when they can.
What it tells you. If seeing the whole route written down made you more curious rather than more tired, and the paperwork and hours did not put you off, that is a real signal to keep going and to start building the grades. If the length, the cost or the load felt heavier than you expected, that is worth taking seriously, and there are other health careers that reach patients faster.
Better than any article
Questions for somebody who does this job
Most people say yes to a teenager who asks good questions. These are the ones that get real answers rather than encouragement.
- “What do you spend most of your week doing that people do not expect?”
- “How do you handle the paperwork and administration?”
- “What was the hardest part of the training?”
- “How do you cope with delivering bad news and with the emotional load?”
- “How did you decide between family medicine and a specialty?”
- “What would you tell a student about the cost and length of the route?”
Could you own one of these?
The part other career sites never mention
Often, yes. Job Bank's workforce data shows a large share of family physicians are self-employed, which means running a clinic as a small business with staff, billing and overhead. Many also work in group or team arrangements where the business side is shared. The CPSO's rules apply either way.
Not sure this is the right list to be reading
Start from yourself, not from the job.
Future Finder is free, takes about ten minutes, needs no account and stores nothing. It will tell you which kinds of work you lean toward, and which of these pages are worth your time.
Parent of a teenager weighing this up? Career coaching for teens gets them talking to people who do the work, anywhere in Ontario.
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Wages and training requirements change. Every figure on this page is linked to the body that publishes it, and the review date above says when we last checked. If you find something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.