When your health care system has to beg the world for doctors, what kind of doctors do you suppose show up?
The ophthalmologist, another specialist told her later, had implanted the lens in the wrong position, obscuring her sight and puncturing a duct, causing a slow bleed and massive pressure."There was so much blood in there, it blew the eyeball out of my head. It was hanging on my cheek," said Ms. Church, a razor-sharp 83-year-old. "The blood was just dripping everywhere ... I was hysterical, the pain was so bad."
Both incidents point to dangerous breakdowns in the Canadian health-care system. But don't expect to find any public record of either apparent blunder -- or of thousands of similarly harmful and sometimes deadly mistakes that occur in facilities across the country each year.
Most instances of the system hurting rather than healing patients, in fact, are not even reported by staff internally, a National Post investigation has documented. [...]
"We do turn a blind eye and walk away," the nurse admitted. "There is a lot of lying, there's a lot of cover-up, which turns my stomach."
If I may also add...if you want to make a doctor look like he has just sh*t himself ask him/her to file an adverse drug report when prescribed drugs turn you into a train wreck.
Mustn't upset Big Pharma either to go with the other lying and coverups of mistakes.
There is the perpetual problem of finding doctors to work in rural areas. My solution is to actually train rural kids to be doctors. They might actually prefer to live in rural areas. Instead they find a lot of doctors that don't look much like the people they are serving who are chomping at the bit to get to a city or to the US.
And then we get the usual blurb about 10,000 trained foreign doctors who can't get licenses to practice in Canada. They are poorly educated and their skills are better utilized driving cab than carving up Canadians.
Socialized health care, like all socialist ventures share a common characteristic.
Its all well and good until you run out of other peoples money.
This is not a flaw, its a feature.
Agree Glengarrian.
But they have no problem putting down Homeopaths, Naturopaths, Chiropractors, Physiotherapists et al.
Trudeaumania cohort takes their medicine.
"We do turn a blind eye and walk away,"
Ouch that is going to hurt, not to mention irony.
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group 'True North'
I agree Scar. If one thing really sets my teeth on edge, it's people talking about foreign trained professionals, and the travesty that they cannot come to Canada and immediately practice their chosen profession. These people have no idea. It's like comparing apples to oranges - in many countries, there is no equivalency of training at all, compared to Canadian, or at least first world, training. Thank goodness we at least do something right, requiring these foreign trained professionals to prove competency before being allowed to practice in Canada.
People do seriously need to become advocates for their own health care,and that of their loved ones. The doctor is, sadly, not always right, not by a long shot!
The reason they are doing the "Red Square Two Step" in denying their is nothing wrong is to limit the amount of malpractice lawsuits in a system that is grossly inefficient and does nothing to inhibit the feeding frenzy of those that manage it.
As for the doctor shortage, it is self-inflicted, probably by design to keep wages high, as doctors set up this fine system to train more doctors. See here...http://deptmed.queensu.ca/blog/?p=266
From that post..."All Canadian schools receive many times more applications than they can accommodate. Statistics collected and published annually by the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada indicate that the Canadian schools collectively received 34,048 applications for their 2,877 total available positions in 2011..."
I have had mixed experiences with foreign trained doctors. the ones trained in a british based system, such as South Africa, were fantastic though lacking in bed side manner. The ones trained in middle east systems are not getting near my body again. Try vasectomy without waiting for the anesthetic to take hold, I dare ya!
I have had three major reconstructive or replacement surgeries in the last three years and another one coming up in a month. All went extremely well and my life has improved immensely from them. And all done here in Saskatchewan.
susan, I hate to burst your bahloon, but many of the imports are far better than the home grown socialists. My ophthalmologist is an immigrant, and top of the line. My GP is a home grown socialist type who I'v had to put on the straight and narrow a couple of times. If not for my own insistence on a certain medical path, I might not be here. I'v found that is also the case with many others, 3 whom woke up dead in the past. The imports are little more likely to not try and accommodate socialist medical practices. Now some in here may just want to stuff there bias were the sun don't shine:-)
In Canada's "universal" health care system, the system will always be more important than the health care.
Something I have thought about for years but never talked about... a shining example of fundamental government uncoordinated incompetence... there's some kind of statistics about requiring a certain number of doctors per population for an effective health-care system, a minimum of something like one doctor for every four hundred and fifty citizens... if you're going to import three hundred thousand new citizens every year, many from the third world, you should have a coordinated government plan to increase the number of doctors working in-country by almost a thousand a year, but I guess Health and Immigration are separate competing government empires... oh well, at least I don't live in one of those third world immigrant-source countries with no organized medical system whatsoever...
didn't Morontario, a few years ago under the federal Liberals, cut back on the number of spaces in medical school, to save money?
Competence is not determined by place of origin. An immigrant Dr. diagnosed my illness in 5 minutes something Canadian Dr.s had failed to do for over 5 years. An immigrant Dr. diagnosed and got treatment for my wife within a week while we were reading about other people with the same illness dying on waiting lists.
The "system" demands a shortage of doctors as the only tool for managing costs in a single payer system with zero retail price (and therefore infinite demand) is rationing, whether it's operating room time, access to diagnostics, you name it. Politicians exist to pretend otherwise.
I have had personal experience with shoddy eye work with resultant pressure-related pain and it was incredible. Luckily for me, all subsequent eye work (cataracts and detached retinas) was done to the South.
"I was a doctor in my country!!"
Yeah, a witch doctor...
Still can't get a straight answer after spending 14 days in ICU a year ago.
IATROGENESIS
: inadvertent and preventable induction of disease or complications by the medical treatment or procedures of a physician or surgeon.
This is an issue in modern medicine everywhere. It always has been. Proper reviews of cases should deal with that and keep it to a minimum. Sometimes it would be dealt with by a larger study reviewing treatment outcomes and protocols.
I'd agree with the good reputation of South African trained doctors. They've been keeping rural medicine in Saskatchewan going for years. We benefit from the political corruption that exists in South Africa.
As for Middle-eastern doctors, their cultural/religious upbringing that views females as being of a lower social/political status is something to be wary of in those who have not risen above that.
It may affect their interaction with female staff and/or patients. It's a known issue and something watched for in their evaluations.
There are only a few cases of Middle-Eastern origin doctors in the medical field turning into jihadis. The Glasgow Airport bombing attempt is one. The medical pathologist who trained at McGill who was recently on trial was acquitted, though the judge agreed that the doctor had adopted jihadi ideology, come to mind.
The M.B. is run by doctors and engineers and lawyers. How many are here is an interesting question for C.S.I.S. to figure out.
A western trained and experienced medical doctor, can't remember which country, has gone to work for ISIS and she was shown holding a severed head in a news story.
Don't worry, this is a small minority. I mean... what are the odds?
But back to the issue of iatrogenesis, it's a medical standards issue. It was around long before immigrant doctors came from 3rd world countries. It's profile has to do with the politics of medicine. To admit publicly, that doctors are not infallible is a trade secret, independent of medicare.
I don't mean to suggest at all that competency has anything to do with origin. However, it is naive to imagine that competency has nothing to do with training received. And also, for every doctor that graduated top of their class (from wherever) we have to remember that someone graduated at the bottom of the class.
Have a family member who is a foreign-trained professional. He received excellent training in eastern Europe and - on returning to Canada - had to meet all the requirements for foreign-trained professionals in his field except the language skill (this he already had). Now a very respected person in his field.
Unfortunately doctor's licences are like driver's licences; all we know is that they passed.
Have had enough experience with the medical profession to know that there are great one and screw-ups as with any other profession.
Now that things are starting to relax in that other bastion of socialist medicine Cuba, wonder how long it will be before we start to recruit their doctors.....Just askin'
Canada is in need of a competitive system. It can work with the gods of socialism too, but it has to be privately owned and publicly funded where the money follows the patients.
The taxpayer has to be able to somehow validate service with their hard earned tax dollars.
If the hospitals won't report improper conduct and procedure and the media won't in most cases, who will? Maybe Canada needs a website forum devoted to healthcare complaints??? Something popular enough to get the medical staff in a tizzy.
Around here, N.B. nord, the hopital can be seen as a type of Nirvana. I mean vs. outdoorsy stuff.and other pursuits. The Hospital,ahem, is NOT to be Tampered with..in my opinion. I figure it comes from those c-sucking unions. (spit)
Susan >
My family doctor came from South Africa and is absolutely brilliant!
He exercised his Right to White flight along with other doctors when black government took over and before they started banning white professionals from fleeing the country. Many western nations denied work and entry visas to white professionals fleeing South Africa thereafter.
Otherwise, there are some good and some bad from the rest of the world, you need a doctor in Canada just jump in any taxi cab in a major urban center. They all have their doctorate degree’s – or so they say.
That said, when a “third world” doctor is charged with malpractice in Canada, the MSM buries it pretty quickly.
“Doctor in Toronto gang-rape trial says complainant initiated sex”
http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/1045588/doctor-in-toronto-gang-rape-trial-says-complainant-initiated-sex/
"And then we get the usual blurb about 10,000 trained foreign doctors who can't get licenses to practice in Canada. They are poorly educated and their skills are better utilized driving cab than carving up Canadians."
Ya mean like the "Asian" truck drivers who bring full accreditation from their homeland and are granted heavy license without a test.....but cannot drive a car with a standard tranny...and are startled by an auto dryer....
Yeah some can shift but most are shiftless ba*****ds.
58 week waiting list at Burnaby General, and counting. Heck, Big Pharma gets my share of meds and painkillers while waiting, meanwhile the admin still gets their 6 figure salaries, while patients endure endless pain and suffering. Aint BC socialist health care grand?
My eye doctor is nice. He wears a white coat. He drives a BMW. He has a wife named Lola and a dog named spot. He is from Scotland. He likes toffee. Gotta go, I can't see the screen.
The end.
In Canada, wait lists for treatment are designed and used to keep the cost of health care delivery down. It works: patients die waiting for treatment. Everyone knows this. Yet, we're supposed to be proud of our health care system. Many are, despite its denying care to patients in order to save money.
Meanwhile, we are denied, by law, the opportunity to use our own money to provide for our own health care. Because equality!
If you work in such a system, if you accept it, if you are proud of it, why wouldn't you be complacent about a bit of malpractice? The system promotes the complacency. It just what we should expect. We should expect it to get worse.
For our American cousins, Canadian healthcare is your VA healthcare scandal writ large. It's coming to a country near you.
Yes, Boob Rae cut back on the number of medical school places, and to their eternal disgrace the BC NDP government of the 90s followed suit. Now there is a severe shortage of family doctors in B.C. and I can tell you from personal experience that there is no substitute for fluent-in-English doctor trained in a first world country.
It's not only a Canadian problem. 50% of all doctors come from the bottom of their class.
http://www.propublica.org/article/how-many-die-from-medical-mistakes-in-us-hospitals
And then there's the UK. Private or not, it's still a crap shoot.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/doctors-basic-errors-are-killing-1000-patients-a-month-7939674.html
DanBC and Nick sum it up well. Our family doctor would agree with every word that both of you said. Like he said, he can't change it, only the people pushing the politicians can change the system. All he can do is be frustrated at the bureaucracy.
Then there is also the problem of office politics in the various health regions that is designed to keep the doctors in their place. This from two specialists when my mom was in the hospital for six months before her death.
Susan, and yes you are absolutely correct. So math modeling dictated that your chance of finding a home grown incompetent are far greater that an import. It's usually the best in any field that move to greener pastures. And that being the point. Your first post was uninformed and biased. Most of these immigrant doctors can not get a job to work at a Learning" level to make sure their skills are up to our standards, the CMA makes sure they don't.
One of the reasons why there is no control over medical errors is that every time some train-wreck 85 year old nursing home resident finally dies after months of "do everything" treatment, the family screams "MALPRAAAAAAAAACTICE!!!" Therefore over the years the system as a whole has gotten very, very good at shutting down that sort of uproar. When -every- death leads to threats of lawsuits and demands for investigation, investigations become very rare indeed.
Unfortunately that means that doctors who really do suck get a free ride. To the point where a physician can really only lose his/her license over -multiple- allegations of sexual assault or "billing irregularities", aka stealing the government's money. Mere incompetence is not considered important enough to warrant dismissal from the College.
Please note that the government is entirely fine with this situation, all the "Continuous Quality Improvement" nonsense is entirely window dressing for the rubes.
Here's something else that will prove controversial here, there is no "doctor shortage". Particularly in rural Ontario. In case you ever wondered why the local doc has office hours at five or six locations, its because no single location has enough trade to support the number of docs in the area.
What we actually have is a shortage of emergency room docs, certain kinds of high-end specialists and operating room hours. Not surgeons, mind. Plenty of them. Plenty of OR nurses too.
Otherwise known as RATIONING.
Diagnostic imaging is rationed as well. Because if you don't have a proven XYZ wrong with you, you're not on an official waiting list. Instead you're on a waiting list for an MRI, which it has been decided is ok. Because there's a "shortage", you know. MRIs are "expensive".
Those who drive to Buffalo and pay cash for diagnostic imaging are frequently met with "problems" when they slap their shiny new diagnosis down in front of their doctor. Reason for the "problems" being this is considered "queue jumping" and is punished in a very Soviet fashion by the bureaucracy. Strongly advise having friends in the trade AND a good lawyer if you need to jump the queue.
The solution of course is a two tier system. Public-pay for the destitute (with a co-pay so they stop showing up at ER with a cold) and private-pay/insurance for the vast majority of people who have means of support. Not only would it be an order of magnitude cheaper for everything, because people simply won't pay $300,000 hospital bills, but also all the incompetent goofs presently working would rapidly lose all their patients. Competition weeds out the stupid.
That this solution is anathema to the Canadian Left tells you the extent to which they don't care if you live or die, so long as you shut up and keep paying those taxes.
If you think the system is bad now wait until the realty of $40/bbl oil sinks in.
Katy wynne, current president of the liars club recently suggested that low energy costs would be good for Ontario. Manufacturing and exports will take up the slack. Sure it will. How will you deal with those 1000's of workers when they return from Alberta jobless? Those 100k plus jobs they all had....gone. Welfare rolls will expand exponentially.
The medical system which is always in a permanent state of crisis will now get worse. It's time to get rid of single payer and bring in private choice in medicine. Canada is a rich first world country. Is there a legitimate reason we rank 30th or whatever the number is in health care?
Healthcare Canada.
Think of this a a showpiece for government compassion.
Incompetence, lying, constant cover up?
A financial black hole with zero benefit for the payee.
Yes indeed.. Good enough for Government.
Healthcare is "free" as long as you do not mind having 1/3 to 1/2 of the return on your labour forcibly taken from you.
Effective and efficient as long as you do not mind waiting until your symptoms are fatal.
However as successful empires of the Parasites, you need look no further, HC is a total bureaucratic success, huge wages for Administrators, minions upon minions and a constant "claimed" shortage of medical staff.
The Administrators out number the medics, nurses are treated like shite.
My doctor spends more time filling in forms, than researching medicine.
In classic health services speak, local nurses cannot get regular shifts, nor benefits to afford to live, yet imported temporary nursing staff get housed, fed, overtime and bonus.
The reason?
Different budgets, sleight of hand accounting for the tax dollars.
The result?
taxpayer gets to pay triple for service, local nurses move or quit nursing.
Brilliant.. for the administrators bonus schemes.
Really destructive to the public.
"Manufacturing and exports will take up the slack."
It might, if the Liberal Party of Ontario repeals all the regulations and taxes they've levied on industry these last 70 years or more. Otherwise, not so much.
-Nobody- makes anything here anymore. They can't compete with the USA much less China/Indonesia. Land price, labor price, transportation price and most especially tax/regulation costs are non-competetive with world prices. Wildly so.
On the bright side, if fuel gets cheap enough I'll be able to get a better price on electricity burning gas in a stand-alone generator than I do from Ontariowe Hydrowe. I wonder how many Chevy Volts you'd have to cut up to power a 200 amp household service? If gas gets down to around $0.25 a quart, that might be worth looking into.
It was the NDP, the Bob Rae gov't. If only there had been a way to tell that the baby boomers would be getting old about now...
"I wonder how many Chevy Volts you'd have to cut up to power a 200 amp household service?"
not enough of them. A 300% number would impress me:-)))
****sigh**** Kyla, math is hard:-)))
If any of you geniuses could figure out how to get rid of human error...you'd be geniuses. This old trope of parading examples of human failing is as old as the first tales. It will exist so long as humans do.
BTW, filing an adverse drug reaction report is a single page report that is then sent by the gov't, to the pharmaceutical firm for comment by the med director. There is ZERO consequence to the filing physician.