Where are all the doctors? All over Canada, there are no doctors and healthcare workers. This is very serious. I’m in the ‘could die at any minute’ stage of life and my odds of surviving go way down when I don’t have a doctor, which I don’t. It’s especially daunting as there’s no support staff and the hospitals are overburdened as well. People are actually dying in hospitals while waiting to be seen by a doctor. Right here in Canada.
What is going on? Some obvious causal factors are coming out. One thing is we’re losing all our baby boom doctors, and there are not the numbers within our population to fill the void. The other thing is worker burnout due to an already overburdened healthcare system, being subjected to a pandemic. The constant and impossible demand caused doctors, healthcare workers and support staff to flee in numbers.
Both these causal factors were predictable. We’ve known for a long time attrition through aging was an issue. We also knew a pandemic was going to come to our borders sooner or later. Still, immigration’s doors to even foreign trained Canadian doctors remained closed. Rather than prepare for a pandemic, we allowed our medical system to lack vision, direction, oversight and adequate funding.
Because of neglect we’ve reached a tipping point in our health care system. The consequence of any tipping point if left unmanaged is you take what you get once it arrives. Changes occur where you no longer have control over outcome. We are about to experience a long term doctor shortage and given the current administrative structure regarding healthcare, we have no control over this occurring. At this point, even if there’s an abrupt policy change, we will still experience a disruption to our health care for more than a few years. That’s a long time for someone like me who’s moving into a stage of life where I will require additional medical attention. It’s far too long for many who have been diagnosed with cancer, and other diseases.
Did you know the third leading cause of death in Canada is from avoidable causes such as wait times and misdiagnosis? Really? What leadership are we receiving when mismanagement ranks as a cause of death right next to cancer and heart disease? The people, including government, who account for this statistic should be outed for incompetence. Mismanagement should never be considered an acceptable cause of death.
When we dig a little more into the issue, we find there’s a lot more to our health crisis than meets the eye. Because of the decentralized nature of our healthcare, there is political wrangling that is holding back substantive change. Some provincial governments are using the crisis as a means to usher in private health care services, and placing their focus there. They’re not adding to the solution, they’re redistributing what we already have which will cause people who don’t have $20,000.00 for a knee replacement to suffer that much longer.
Speaking of government, the federal government, with much bravado I might add, just recently placed doctors on a preexisting fast track immigration system. They’ve known about the looming doctor shortage for how long? They’re just getting around to streamlining immigration for doctors now. Way to go Canada!
Once these doctors arrive into Canada, they still have to meet a number of criteria to practice. This is where the greatest bottleneck to our doctor shortage occurs. Medical colleges determine who gets residency. Regardless of their competency, Canadian students get residency first. Less than 30%(3) of Canadian, not immigrant, doctors trained abroad are given residency positions. There are so many doctors wanting to work in Canada right now. Maybe the people running the medical colleges should reevaluate the scope of their residency? It’s inefficient, and there are many ways to increase residency rates.
The same people repress critical review of their authority. The in place system of ‘Quality review of care,’ is opaque. Most often, internal reviews exclude the patient and family, basically out of the fear of being sued. Isn’t it something when a Canadian institution can withhold evidence regarding it’s own crimes? Right at the place where life and death are dealt with most often. Shouldn’t this place more than others, demand an open process to ensure public safety, including exposing criminal practice?
By the way, evidence(1) shows the opposite of getting your ass sued off, is what occurs with full disclosure to families. Why are the administrators of our health system not aware of this? Their job is to make the system more efficient. If they’re not asking these questions, it becomes our responsibility to ask them for them.
All these people need to be wrung out on the carpet. They are not doing their job. They’re hiding behind the antiquated process of tradition, and missing completely the efficiency of a new world founded on maximizing efficiency. The only thing holding up our health system is our health system, holding onto something that has long since passed. Now only something new will work and the old system must be turned on it’s ear.
This is what we, who suffer from the current administration must demand. Hire some damn doctors! It’s that simple. We have more doctors working at Walmart than practicing medicine. It doesn’t matter who’s ultimately responsible for getting this done. Every segment of government and medical administration should be held accountable until we see the results needed to fix the broken health care system. A new system that focuses on growth, maintenance, and our coming needs.
What’s going to happen when provinces like Ontario and Alberta start opening private clinics and surgeries? Are they not going to take away from the rest of us? Canada was one of the first nations to bring universal health care to it’s people. A major step in the democratic march to equality. Universal healthcare is not broken. It’s those who have been given stewardship over the system, who are broken. They are no longer capable of doing what’s needed for the system of healthcare to function efficiently. For your own survival, demand more.