I’m a rural emergency room doctor — and I feel the need to publicly apologize.
I’m sorry that many of you are often not receiving the health care you need, in the right place or at the right time. And I’m sorry that many of you don’t have a primary care provider, that wait times are so long and that I sometimes see you in the hallway where you have little privacy. While this happening in our rural hospital in Kenora, Ont., I’ve seen similar experiences reflected in emergency rooms across the country.
So, I need you to believe me when I say that my colleagues and I cannot fix these problems ourselves. In fact, trying to fix the problem has pushed some of us to the point of leaving the profession — and the effort to look after ourselves may worsen services.
As long as you push the ama to push to educate more doctors and for universal health care, then I don’t think you have anything to feel bad about. We should have as many doctors as we need and should not be rationed based on wealth of the patients. We should be weeding out physcicians based on capability and not on the ability to stay awake for massive amounts of time.
Likewise, wealth shouldn’t be a barrier to entry to becoming a doctor. We need to re-think education.
I mean I know they used to have a program where medical school loans could be paid by working in rural communities. Its actually underserved but within the program working near a city was very competitive as that is where all the doctors wanted to work to get the loan forgiveness.