Analysis of Canadian Physician Obituaries Between 2000 and 2023 to Investigate Trends in Death Between Specialties: A Retrospective Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Objectives

A physician's work environment varies greatly depending on their medical specialty. As such, it may dictate their stress levels, work-life balance, satisfaction, and, ultimately, expected age of death. This paper aims to determine trends in Canadian physician deaths and determine the median age of death for different specialties.

Methods

We examined physician obituaries from the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) published between 2000 and 2023, extracting age at death and medical specialty.

Results

The median age of death for doctors had a steady incline between 1999 and 2023 with a median age of 80 years. Careers in psychiatry (p = 0.020, 95% confidence interval [CI] [1.00, 4.00]) and emergency medicine (p = 0.025, 95% CI [7.00, 26.00]) were associated with decreased average ages of death, while careers in surgery (p < 0.001, 95% CI [−4.00, −2.00]), internal medicine (p = 0.038, 95% CI [−3.00, −1.00]), and public health (p = 0.016. 95% CI [−9.00, −2.00]) correlated with older ages of death. Of the statistically significant specialties, emergency medicine physicians had the lowest median age at death (59 years) while surgery and public health had the highest (81.5 and 83.5, respectively).

Conclusion

Our findings indicate that the median age of death differs across different medical specialties. Moving forward, the CMAJ should report physician obituaries consistently in a standardized format as it holds the most extensive obituary dataset despite missing significant data between 2008 and 2022.