May

Thank you for your interest in the BCMJ and for your kind words regarding the efforts of our Editorial Board.

The contributions of the BC Medical Journal Editorial Board members are well respected. However, the current Editorial Board is made up of senior, long-serving, eminent physicians who do not reflect the demographics of Doctors of BC members. There are no visible minorities on the Editorial Board, and the names of the current members, listed at the front of the journal, suggest they all have Western European ancestry.

I would like to thank Dr Yousefi for his detailed response to my letter. We are in agreement that comprehensive primary care will always be the cornerstone of medicine. It would, however, be a mistake to underestimate the power of financial incentives in influencing behaviors, even in honorable professions. There is a 100% correlation between physician services that are deemed MSP negative (complex care, chronic disease, elderly care, facility-based care, etc.) and physician avoidance. GP subspecialization follows this pattern.

Dr Nicolson’s eulogy for Marcus Welby[1] completely misses the mark when it comes to understanding the complex reasons behind the overwhelming changes in practice patterns of modern-day family physicians. For obvious reasons comprehensive primary care will always remain the cornerstone of medicine in small rural settings, and physicians’ professional societies and funders must continue to fully support rural family physicians by ensuring proper remuneration and practice support. Some of the ideas raised by Dr Nicolson may indeed help practitioners in such settings.

If we are going to agree that fictional Dr Marcus Welby is the best professional example for our students to emulate [BCMJ 2016;58:63-64], why not make the TV series a compulsory part of the med-school curriculum? But then again, maybe Marcus would only be suitable for those headed into family practice.