July

BC youth have been estimated to have a relatively high—15%—prevalence of mental health disorders.[1] Even more alarmingly, disease onset occurred before 18 years of age in 70% of Canadian adults living with mental illness.[2] Youth are among the most susceptible groups for mental health problems, yet are poorly equipped to recognize disorders and most likely to seek help from each other.[3]

All registrants are required under the Health Professions Act to provide a public address and phone number. There is no requirement to provide a fax number. 

Physicians not professionally active (for example, retired life registrants who are not eligible to re­activate licensure) will not appear in future editions of the Medical Directory. Practising physicians are listed in the Medical Directory in their licens­ed specialty. 

One would think that the College would discourage the inappropriate release of patients’ clinical information, but the College does not seem to care. I have just received the eighth faxed referral this year. Now 76, I retired from office practice 6 years ago and may be away from fax and home for up to 6 weeks. Some of these faxed referrals are urgent, all are inappropriate, and they waste the kindness of the family physician and the time of all involved. 

I can empathize with Mr Provan’s frustration with PBL (BCMJ 2011;53;132-133). Monday mornings were particularly useless, as we sat around trying to brainstorm through a new case before having received relevant lectures. Those of us who were hoping for teachers to give us a strong foundation in early medical school were disappointed. 

Andrew Provan is to be congratulated for his critique of problem-based learning (PBL). I hope he will not be ignor­ed by those who were behind this innovation when it was introduc­ed a decade or more ago when I was coming to the end of my practice and teaching career. It seemed to me then, and I then said so and felt like an old fogey, that asking students to teach themselves by what amounts to a trial-and-error technique would be folly. It is rather like going to sea without a map, to paraphrase Osler’s famous statement about textbooks.