September

If we are to succeed in repopulating our province with doctors, we must make far greater use of seasoned clinical faculty mentors from the community—physicians who have dedicated their lives to the art of caring for patients and are willing to help train future physicians. As suggested in the first article in this theme issue, “A tale of two cultures,” we have a shortage of doctors in key specialties and geographical regions because of the decreasing exposure to appropriate physician mentors, due in part to a paradox in our system of medical education.

References

I recently went on holiday—my usual summer vacation goal is rest and rejuvenation, and to devour as many books (usually novels) as I can because I seldom have time otherwise to escape. (And yes, I admit that I did take the latest Harry Potter installment with me!)

I can clearly remember my grandfather waxing on about the good old days at a time in my life when anything anyone over the age of 20 had to say was something south of boring. My grandfather, however, was persistent, in-your-face opinionated, and tempered no sign of disrespect. His favorite soliloquy involved a list of what was wrong with today. In his day, a dollar went further, people had more time to think and talk about things that mattered (like politics and hockey), friendships were important, family had pre-eminence, and doctors were the backbone of a just, caring society.

BC Medical Journal: Can you tell me about one of your career highlights?
Becoming BCMA president is a great honor, one that I take very seriously. Doing this job is definitely a highlight for me.

Although I am 80 years old and retired, my brain occasionally fires up as it did this morning when I heard of another case of “flesh-eating” disease.

When I was a child there were no antibiotics, and cuts, abrasions, and the like were treated by conscientious moms very seriously with cleansing, antisepsis (usually tincture of iodine or peroxide) and a clean (ironed) bandage. Perhaps we have become too careless in our overdependence on the antibiotics.