Physician/Patient Power Point

Those practising in the medical professional are still looked upon as special, their medical knowledge and their diagnostic-and-treatment abilities rendering them in some peoples' judgement as close to god as any human is about to get.  People trust them, hold them in admiration, respect them.  They have knowledge that is not shared by the general public.  Wisdom is ascribed to them of a kind not normally seen in the general, non-medical-profession public.

Doctors and other health professionals earn salaries commensurate in large part with their education, with their practise and experience, with the esteem in which they are held in society.  The shortage of doctors and other medical professionals practising in Canada is a matter of acute concern.  There are far too many people who do not have the comfort of having a family physician.  Doctors' skills are needed to keep a society well-functioning.

So they are respected, and they are well compensated financially.  So well compensated that the salaries they earn, even in a country where universal medicare puts a cap on earnings that would not occur elsewhere, are considerably above those earned by other professionals in other prestige categories of social service or business.  No one really begrudges physicians their relative wealth.  They are generally held to be hard-working and the judgement they exercise can be a matter of life-or-death to their patients.

In the presence of their doctors, people are usually given to being compliant.  Following doctors' orders.  For if those orders are contested, or not obliged, the doctor could very well be disgruntled enough at the lack of co-operation to withdraw his services.  Or claim, should health go awry, that though she/he did his/her duty to the patient, the patient failed to do his due duty to his own welfare.

There's a certain amount of intimidation factored into the patient-health-professional relationship.  And here we come to an issue that a group of Ontario doctors are finding wanting within their own professional cohorts in the province.  The Province of Ontario, facing the prospect of a growing deficit has asked some high-earning professional groups for some wage concessions.  Doctors and those in the teaching professions take exception to this singling out of their professions.

Doctors in particular, claim as a group under the Ontario Medical Association that they are being short-shrifted, and the public, as a result, is facing a potential down-grade of services due them.  Anti-cutback petitions targeting the public and patients are going the rounds; not just in newspaper advertisements, but in doctors' offices where patients are asked to sign such petitions.

"Doctors are there for the patient's well-being, not to persuade patients to support their political positions", reads a release by Medical Reform Group, a doctor-operated public health care advocate.  While they may not be averse, as a public-interest non-profit, to the stance taken by their professional body with the petition arguing against a freeze on doctors' wages, they don't appreciate doctors taking the issue to their patients.

Patients being confronted by the petitions will read that the proposed freeze: "will impact my doctor's ability to provide care for me and my family", calling on the provincial government to "negotiate in good faith with doctors for an agreement what will protect Ontario health care".  The cuts which the OMA estimates in the $1-billion ballpark are cited to represent a "serious risk to health care in our community and across the province."

And this is what patients are confronted with and asked by their doctors' office staff or their doctor him/herself, to sign.  "In our view, anything that would enlist the patient's support for a political goal of the physician would be problematic. The OMA would no doubt argue that physicians being paid more is in the patient's best interest - that may or may not be true - but it's clearly still a political issue", stated Dr. Gordon Duyatt, MRG president, a medical researcher at McMaster University.

Dr. Guyatt speaks of the power dynamic between doctor and patient: "The patient's experience could be that if they didn't support the physician's political aim, the physician might in some way be unhappy with them.  If that person is operating on your eye the next day, it might make you a trifle nervous", he explained.  To the consternating objections of the OMA spokesperson who labelled the assertion "insulting".


Let's hear it for Dr. Guyatt and other Ontario doctors who have signed on to the Medical Reform Group.