well, we were all pre-med when we *started* college…

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from the Toronto Star, an article that discusses canada’s medical status quo– apparently they don’t have enough doctors.

this made me choke on my chardonnay. not enough doctors? there are one billion indians walking the earth! :p how is ANYONE lacking doctors?

is dr. sunil patel (who is quoted below) the only brown person in canada? 😉 no, that can’t be. CANADA has TEN brown legislators! so where are all the doctors? and more pressing than that, what on earth do canadian uncles and aunties brag about at parties if their kids aren’t in med school? anyone? buehler??

Canada needs to invest $1 billion over the next five years to reverse its serious shortage of doctors and ensure there will be enough health-care providers in future to reduce long waiting lists plaguing hospitals, the Canadian Medical Association says.
The association wants Ottawa to create a national health human resources reinvestment fund, which would plan for future personnel needs and “help end the health human resources boom-and-bust planning cycle,” outgoing president Dr. Sunil Patel told a news conference at the annual meeting in Toronto yesterday.

9 thoughts on “well, we were all pre-med when we *started* college…”

  1. Well, they have lots of rural areas where few want to practice, and they have socialized medicine with (I’d imagine) lower doctor salaries.

  2. one of my best friends in grad school was born and raised in WV. reason? both of her parents were doctors who chose to practice in less than “settled” parts of that state. THAT’S why i didn’t think of your first point…i was aware of your second.

    to be frank with you though, i was just trying to continue with my ann coulter-esque responsibility to talk out of my colon and be entertaining. 😉 like her, once i finish tossing my hair and uncrossing my legs, you will forget everything i just wrote anyway. 😀

  3. From what I know, the factors of not recognizing foreign medical training, few medical schools, and stiff competition to get in all are responsible for this trend.

  4. I think this might be part of the explanation:

    Residents started proffering gifts when rumors leaked out of Hôtel-Dieu Grace Hospital a few weeks ago that the two neurosurgeons — of the four serving the city — were toying with moving their practice to the United States. “It’s not about the money,” said Dr. Sriharan, a 38-year-old immigrant from Sri Lanka. “We can’t do our job properly with operating room time so extremely limited here.” Forced to compete for operating room time with other surgeons, he said that he and his colleague could complete only one or two operations on some days, meaning that patients whose cases were not emergencies could go months or even years before completing necessary treatment. “Scarce resources are simply not being spent properly,” Dr. Sriharan concluded, citing a shortage of nurses and anesthesiologists in the hospital where the single microscope available is old and breaking down. The two surgeons are sharply critical of Canada’s health care system, which is driven by government-financed insurance for all but increasingly rations service because of various technological and personnel shortages. Both doctors said they were fed up with a two-tier medical system in which those with connections go to the head of the line for surgery.

    The point: socialized medicine means queues, the flight of your best physicians, and inefficient resource allocation. You don’t solve the problem of high prices for health care by eliminating competition altogether .

  5. Since two of my cousins were raised in BC and went to Canadian med schools, I have to throw in my two cents here. Both went to good Canadian med schools, then ran for the US to specialize. And of course, unsurprisingly, they stayed in the US to practice. As already mentioned, it’s a shame but this is a consequence of socialized medicine.

  6. As the user har has mentioned, most foreign credentials arent recognized, I’ve heard of doctors with 20 yr. foreign experience being denied the licence to practice.

    Another contradiction exists. While the government keeps complaining of the shortage of doctors & nurses, most medical trainees & nurses in Canada say that very few positions are actually available in the hospitals. They are thus forced to go to the US, where they also end up getting better money.

  8. EVERYONE at davis was pre-med until they flunked the MCAT. to my astonishment, a few of those morons actually thought that i was a poli-sci major just to “give me an edge” when applying to med school, b/c it would show how “well-rounded” i was. well-rounded my ASS! oh… wait… 😉

  9. Ha… why is it that most pre-meds imagine the whole world would go to med school if only they could get in?!?

    You thought you got grief for being a poli-sci major- being a non-pre-med chemistry major was definitely fodder for all kinds of nonsense! I remember getting into an actual fight with one of my chemistry professors, because he was so convinced that I was another South Asian pre-med student. I wanted to work in his lab for the summer, and he thought it was just so I’d have a better looking application.