Practical tools for
every stage.
From the University of Toronto Retirement Guidebook to a checklist for closing your practice — everything you need to plan with the same rigour you bring to your work.
Late Career Transitions and Retirement Planning Guidebook
Produced by the Temerty Faculty of Medicine Late Career Transitions and Retirement Planning Group · Recommended by ASSET
This guidebook, produced by the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, is a comprehensive resource covering the three pillars of late-career surgical transition: financial planning, professional identity, and competence. Written for and by surgeons, it is practical, evidence-informed, and direct.
Topics covered include: winding down practice overhead, CMPA coverage in retirement, academic appointment status, hospital privileges, cognitive self-assessment, identity after the OR, and building a meaningful second chapter.
Closing Your Practice — Checklist
Winding down an operative surgical practice involves a cascade of logistical, legal, and financial steps that are rarely discussed and never taught. This checklist is designed to be worked through with your division head, financial advisor, and — if applicable — practice manager.
Financial off-boarding is often the most underestimated step. Practice overhead — staff salaries, office rent, equipment leases, malpractice tail coverage — can represent significant annual costs that don't stop the day you stop operating. Planning a wind-down schedule 12–24 months in advance is strongly recommended.
CMPA Coverage
- Understand transition from active to retired member status
- Review tail coverage requirements
- Register for CMPA retirement resources and workshops
Hospital Privileges
- Initiate formal process to relinquish or modify OR privileges
- Understand implications for academic appointment
- Discuss emeritus vs. same-rank vs. appointment loss with division head
Academic Appointment
- Clarify emeritus professor eligibility and process
- Discuss continued teaching, supervision, or committee roles
- Review any institutional retirement benefit thresholds
Practice Overhead
- Inventory all ongoing practice costs
- Plan staff transition with appropriate notice
- Review office lease termination clauses
- Transfer or close practice equipment and records
Licensure & OMA
- Review College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPSO) retirement options
- Understand implications of reduced vs. full licensure
- Explore OMA retirement membership and benefits
Financial Off-Boarding
- Engage a financial advisor familiar with physician retirement
- Review practice plan contribution wind-down
- Understand pension and registered account options
- Plan for post-retirement income sources
For Surgeons-in-Chief and Division Heads
Many Surgeons-in-Chief are significantly younger than the senior surgeons they review — and may have been their trainees. These conversations can be uncomfortable. ASSET's guidance is designed to help.
The following eight questions form the basis of a recommended annual review framework for senior faculty. They should be coordinated with division-level 1-, 3-, and 5-year human resource plans.
Career horizons
What are the surgeon's plans at 1–3, 5, and 10+ year horizons? Have these been documented and reviewed year over year?
Health and wellbeing
Are there any physical or mental health issues affecting practice? This should be asked with care, compassion, and appropriate confidentiality.
Competence
Are there self-generated concerns about operative competence? Any external concerns from peers, patients, or AAP results?
Sabbatical or leave
Has the surgeon considered a sabbatical or leave of absence? Does the division have a sabbatical policy? If not, developing one should be a priority.
Changing practice profile
Is the surgeon open to transitioning to less complex cases, practice sharing, more clinic-based work, or reduced operative volume?
Call reduction or cessation
Is the surgeon interested in reducing or stopping call? What are the coverage implications, and how can the division support this?
Teaching, mentoring, leadership
What opportunities exist for post-operative contributions — education, research, committees, medicolegal work — with appropriate remuneration?
Recognition
What form of recognition is appropriate for the surgeon's career service? Retirement events, named lectures, visiting professorships, emeritus appointment.
Financial Planning
Financial transition is not a single event — it is a multi-year process that ideally begins a decade before the operative stop. Key considerations include practice overhead wind-down, changes to CMPA coverage premiums, OMA benefit continuity, practice plan contribution schedules, and funding options for post-retirement activities.
OMA Member Services
The Ontario Medical Association provides retirement planning resources, workshops, and financial services specifically for physicians. Contact OMA for retirement-specific guidance.
CMPA Retirement Resources
The Canadian Medical Protective Association offers webinars and guides on managing medicolegal risk in retirement, including tail coverage and reduced-risk membership.
Physician Financial Advisors
Financial advisors who specialise in physician transition understand practice plan wind-down, incorporation complexities, and the unique structure of surgical income.
AEF and Hospital Foundations
The Academic Excellence Fund and hospital foundations can provide mechanisms for post-retirement funding of teaching, research, or educational activities.
Competence and Cognitive Health
Cognitive decline is a natural part of aging. It is not a moral failing, and it is not binary. The question for surgeons is not whether cognition changes with age — it does, in everyone — but how to assess that change honestly and act on it proactively.
The self-assessment of cognitive capacity is well-documented to be unreliable in the very population it most affects. This is not a slight — it is a neurological reality that affects surgeons and non-surgeons alike. It is one of the strongest arguments for external, objective evaluation rather than self-monitoring alone.
ASSET Research Pilot
ASSET is supporting a research pilot investigating whether surgeons' self-evaluation of cognitive and visual-spatial function correlates with validated objective test results. Surgeons interested in participating should contact the ASSET group directly.
External resources include the Aging Surgeon Program at LifeBridge Health in Baltimore, which provides confidential, voluntary cognitive and physical evaluation for surgeons. The goal of such programmes is not punitive — it is to give surgeons the information they need to make good decisions for themselves, their patients, and their families.
External Links and Further Reading
Links and citations will be updated as new resources are identified. To suggest an addition, contact ASSET.