2001

I am adding to the letters published in your November 2000 issue [BCMJ 2000;42(9):413] regarding the physician supply issue and how best to deal with it.

One of the solutions proposes more residency positions to match the number of medical students graduating from UBC, that number being 120. The next letter proposes to re-install the rotating internship year, to help budding physicians make an informed decision as to which specialty they should train into.

A report in the British press (Sunday Telegraph 24 September 2000:4) states that 39 patients at two fertility clinics in Hampshire have been told that their frozen embryos are missing or unusable. Ten were patients at the assisted conception unit of the National Health Service’s North Hampshire Hospital and 29 were patients at the privately operated Hampshire Clinic in Basingstoke. An embryologist who worked at the latter has been suspended on full pay. An internal investigation is being conducted under the aegis of the Human Fertilization and Embryo Authority.

I would like to respond to and supplement the excellent article in the June 2000 issue of the British Columbia Medical Journal [42(5):241] by Dr Cairns, dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of British Columbia. Dr Carins provides an optimistic snapshot of the future, including a glimpse at more individualized care made available by increased knowledge of genetics and the capabilities of information technology to allow greater monitoring and accountability within the health system.

Please allow me to invite you to share with me the experience of a transatlantic flight of a few months ago. I was privileged to travel business class when called to assist a patient. Entering economy class, I saw that every seat was taken, there was hardly space to move. Attending to the patient, I was faced with problems that may require some degree of preparedness by any physician traveling by air. One of them is managing the hostile or belligerent encounter. One may wonder, what happens to alcohol at an altitude of 7000 feet, where even plain water begins to boil remarkably quickly?