The Semi-Purpose Doctor

"I keep declaring a conflict of interest in this research: I waited over a year for a new hip so I'm really keen to find solutions for all of us. I am not sure that we're really organizing our resources as optimally as we could so that we could find work for everyone and shorten wait times."
"We really need a pan-Canadian approach to address the health-care workforce in Canada."
"The summit's not to try to fix the problem for the doctors; it's really about how can we come together to serve the needs of the public."
Danielle Frechette, Royal College of Physicians and Services of Canada, organizer of the National Summit on Physician Employment

Medical student James Reid watches Dr. Tracy Scott operate to remove a tumour from a patient. Unemployment among doctors is the focus of a national summit this week.    Photograph by: Ward Perrin, Postmedia News File Photo , Postmedia News

It seems that Canada has recognized it now has a glut of physicians. Not general-purpose physicians mind you, like the kind that older Canadians have been long familiar with, and now appear to have retired largely to make way for the flood of new physicians. Still family practitioners, but no longer as hands-on, practical and capable as their predecessors. The new general practitioners see their patients, they diagnose -- and then they delegate hands-on to he growing field of specialists.

Referrals to those practising specialized medicine has become the norm in the examination room of the nation's general practitioners. And it is among those who practise specialized medicine that there appears to be a problem in finding steady, full employment opportunities. Yet the public still faces the fact that there are insufficient numbers of general practitioners to service the needs of those still looking for family doctors.

It might seem that a solution to the problem would be to return the status quo, now seemingly abandoned, where doctors of old, treating in family practise, knew their stuff and didn't mind doing all the little emergency-type things they no longer do, like stitching up wounds, like lancing boils, that kind of thing. Instead of making referrals to doctors who do practise that kind of hands-on medicine, have medical schools equipping generalists with the old practical knowledge once so common.

The phenomenon of unemployed or under employed physicians in Canada, according to the Royal College's Daniell Frechette, appears vexing, with 16% of specialist physicians unable to find work in the country. While Canadians continue to countenance long wait times for medical procedures. She has cited her own need of hip surgery as a case in point. Ms. Frechette points out that poor economic performance appears to be at the heart of the problem. Fewer operating rooms, and physicians remaining longer in the workforce(?) she explains.

The summit which she organized on behalf of the College, is set to be attended by representatives of medical, educational and government entities. Its goal, to reveal any other causes leading to employment challenges and to come up with the establishment of a national strategy to direct health-care professionals in the future. Fears of another "brain drain", with unemployed young doctors leaving the country in search of work haunts the profession.

Well, it appears there's a corollary at work here, with Canada experiencing a lack of labourers, of people skilled in the labouring professions, the blue-collar workers that proliferate in Europe and are often brought to Canada on temporary work visas to fill the gap of need. With the medical profession it's clearly reflected in too few general practitioners being graduated from medical schools; too many aspiring doctors edging toward the better-remunerated specialities.

It doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.