The overall goal of the National Physician Survey (NPS) project is to produce a comprehensive database documenting what all physicians in Canada are doing in their practices in response to both societal needs and personal and professional interests. The database also includes the perspectives and expressed practice intentions of the physicians of tomorrow.

To achieve this goal and to better understand how physicians practice and respond to their patients' health needs, the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) collaboratively intend to:

• conduct a survey of Canadian physicians, residents and medical students every three years (beginning in 2004), thereby integrating the workforce surveys of the CFPC, the CMA and the RCPSC.
• inform health care system planners about overall physician workforce resource needs and allocation, as well as support and inform health care stakeholder organizations and training programs.
• develop and maintain an up-to-date physician workforce database; ensure that this database contains a comprehensive range of data, including, but not restricted to, practice profile, practice setting, remuneration mode, services provided, workload, on-call activities, populations served, perceived problems with access to medical care, planned changes in practice scope, and use of technology.

Specific Objectives of the medical student and resident study:

• To better understand the range and scope of services that future physicians in Canada intend to provide.
• To enable comparisons between practicing physician practice patterns and future physician practice intentions.
• To better predict the functional specialties and career paths of future physicians.
• To identify potential differences between future and current physicians in relation to intended workload, practice setting, and preferred remuneration modes by age and sex and to be able to track these over time.
• To identify trends in relation to physicians' regional/familial/environmental backgrounds, and where they eventually settle to practice.
• To provide valid and current background information for physician training programs, the medical student/resident selection process, as well as the physician recruitment process in Canada