The future: An introduction
Issue: BCMJ,
vol. 42 , No. 5 , June 2000 ,
Pages 234 Clinical Articles
The year 2000 is a significant turning point in the life of the British Columbia Medical Association because it is, as you know, the association’s 100th birthday. To celebrate this milestone, the BC Medical Journal has published, since the July/August 1999 issue, a series of articles on British Columbia medical history. The series concludes in this issue with “The medical history of the Upper Fraser Valley,” beginning on the Back Page.
Now that we have looked back, it is time to look ahead. We asked spokespeople in the various sectors of BC medicine to look into the future and write a short article on what they foresee. Some confined themselves to the immediate future, some looked 25 years ahead; one was brave enough to imagine what 2100 might hold for our children.
There is a surprising consistency to the predictions. Several themes emerge: the inevitability of radical change to the medical system, the importance of physicians’ participation in that change, the need to train more doctors in BC, the upcoming use of technology at the point of care, and, despite that technology, the continuing need for physicians to maintain not only their traditional role as patient advocate, but also their traditional skills of listening, analyzing, and caring. In a few places the writers contradict each other, but that occurs less frequently than you might imagine.
We look forward to your letters on the subject of the future of medicine, whether they come to us through cyberspace or by way of our blue-clad letter carrier, written by hand on your embossed letterhead.
—BCMJ Editorial Board
