2.1 Introduction
An important first step in physician workforce planning is to establish a broad profile of family physicians (FPs) in Canada. This includes the types of practice that FPs are involved in, the settings in which they deliver patient care, and the range of medical services they provide.

2.2 Who Are Canada’s Family Physicians?
The first question of the survey was focussed on finding out how the respondents would describe themselves as family physicians. The results are presented in Table 1.

Table 1
Self-identified Types of Family Physicians

¹Since more than one category could be chosen, the percentages do not add up to 100%.

²This percentage is based on those respondents who checked off this category only. Some respondents checked off this category and another on the list. If those who checked off this and another category are included, the percentage increases to 75.6%.

³Since disproportionate sampling was used, all results are weighted to ensure equal representation. All results are based on the total population of active family physicians in Canada (N=27,324). Details about the methodology are available on the CFPC website.

Slightly less than three-quarters of the respondents considered themselves to be "Family physicians-General practitioners". The next most frequently chosen category was "Family physician-General practitioner/Other". Respondents who checked off this category were asked to specify what "Other" category applied to them. Of the 14.6% who checked this option, 19.6% said they were a "Family physician-General practitioner/Emergency physician". This finding is of note, given that "Emergency physician" was one of the closed-ended categories available on the list. Other respondents said that they were also Obstetricians/Gynaecologists (14%), Occupation/Industrial physicians (8%) and Psychotherapists (7%), in addition to being Family physicians – General practitioners.

2.3 Types of Family Medicine Practice
The respondents were asked to describe their family medicine practice. The results are summarized in Table 2.

What has become immediately evident from this table is that the majority of FPs were not in solo practice. Only slightly more than 30% were in solo practice, but some of those in solo practice also checked off other categories, suggesting that they were working in more than one type of practice. Further analysis shows that male FPs (35.6%) were more likely than female FPs (22.4%) to be in solo practice.

About 45% of FPs indicated that they were in group practice. On average, family physician group practices had 5.4 FPs. Those group practices which included both FPs and other physician specialists had a mean of 10.9 FPs. Multidisciplinary practices, which included independent practitioners in other disciplines, had a mean of 8.5 FPs.

Table 2
Proportions of Family Physicians in Various Types of Medical Practices

Based on N=27,324

¹ The combined percentage may exceed 100% as some respondents checked off more than one category.

2.4 Family Practice Settings
Another important piece of information in establishing a profile of FPs is the practice settings of FPs. The information is presented in Table 3.

The medical practice of some FPs took place in more than one practice setting. While half of all family physicians restricted their practice to only one type of practice setting, 21.6% were involved in two settings and 28.7% were involved in more than two settings.

Table 3
Proportions of Family Physicians in Various Practice Settings

¹ The combined percentage may exceed 100% as some respondents checked off more than one category.

Although 79% of FPs were involved in private-office practice, only 49.1% of them had this as their only practice setting. Regional variations were noted and will be examined in more detail at a later date.