May

Despite the many benefits of regular cervical cancer screening, fewer women in this province are getting Pap tests. Further intervention is needed to reverse this trend and drive awareness around the benefits of regular Pap tests.

Students of medicine trust that their lives as physicians will be revealed gradually, like a photograph coming to light. We hope that time and exposure will develop our clinical acumen, sharpen our focus, and help us maintain our composure. We’ve seen the wounds our mentors have rent and reunited. We’ve watched pains ease with remedies and rhetoric. We wonder at them, the ones who came before us, and ask ourselves which pearls they’ve sifted out, and kept, and which they’ve cast aside.

I enjoyed the thought-provoking letter by psychiatrist Dr Quan on professionalism (BCMJ 2014;56:83). This concept has been highlighted by Doctors of BC during the past few years with the aim of keeping it foremost on our minds. Dr Quan seems to bemoan the generational shift and touches on the complexity of modern medicine.

Dr Rety is a remarkable fellow and I well remember when, as a member of the BCMA’s Communications Committee, he advanced the idea of renaming the BCMA to Doctors BC. We liked the idea and used it as a tagline for some of the patient advocacy programs we ran at the time.

I recently learned about the change of our association’s name to Doctors of BC. I proposed renaming the association Doctors BC some 30 years ago, as described in an article I wrote for the May 1983 issue of the BC Medical Journal, (BCMJ 1983;25:232-233). I welcome the recent name change but I would delete the word of from the name. It does not roll off the tongue and is redundant.