It was nice to see articles in the June BCMJ reflecting the seriousness of the crisis in our health care system. I have worked as an internist under a Social Credit government, Liberal government, and NDP government. They had one thing in common: they made physicians fight very hard for any improvements across all aspects of health care.

Remember reduced-activity days? That was a revolution of doctors against an oppressive, bureaucratic system, and yes, some positive changes were achieved. There is, unfortunately, only one way to make politicians listen: you get the public on your side and then you start pushing politicians so hard that they begin to fear the next election. Unions never achieved any concessions from their employers by being nice!

Canadian medical students are supposed to finance their education, but when they become doctors, they are expected to be happy to be paid poorly for their services. This is most obvious in primary care.
—J.J. Simice, MD
Comox

hidden

[11]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License [11].