Solving the Shortage of Medical Professionals!

When last I was living in Eastern Ontario, Canada, there was and still is a critical shortage of qualified doctors and nurses. Paramedics sometimes pulled up to a hospital's emergency entrance and were told they'd have to wait. There was no space or attendants to take responsibility for new patients at the moment. Paramedics do not have time to sit around twiddling their thumbs. They are on call 24/7 and cannot spend time sitting waiting for hospitals to get their acts together.

Similarly, there is a critical shortage of qualified nurses as well which compounds the problem. Why? Well, this may not be the only reason but there are always recruiting drives by large American hospitals offering substantially more to qualified nurses than Canadian hospitals pay. Canadian doctors and nurses are an important part of the brain drain to the USA. Who can blame them for wanting to make more money? But the victims are those people in the back of paramedic ambulances who cannot get proper and immediate care they deserve.

An off shoot of the shortage of doctors and nurses is that those who do work in hospitals and other healthcare facilities are often overworked and stressed out. Do you think this doesn't get passed along to the patients? Shorter tempers, less frequent attention and shorter time spent with patients can lead to more mistakes. The last figure I heard was that a patient seeing a doctor could expect to spent between 3-7 minutes with the doctor. My personal doctor had two consultation rooms on the go. While he was seeing one patient, the nurse/receptionist was getting the next one, medical file, etc. ready in the other room. Talk about an assembly line procedure. But what else can doctors do when there are more patients than the doctors can currently handle?

Operations can have up to a two year waiting list. What happens? Since 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles (sorry, 160 km) of the US border, many opt to go south where they receive immediate care - for a price. Canadian doctors are not allowed to charge for most immediate services. I am all in favour of the Canadian social medical system but you also have to look at the reality of what is happening and do more than give lip service to change. "We'll set up a Commission to study the problem." And who will be the distinguished members of this commission? Likely academics with little experience outside academia but lots of experience spending years on research and information-gathering projects - along with people in favour with the present government. Oh, and the cost...probably in the millions. And the time...a minimum of several years. Meanwhile, people are dying because they cannot get the immediate care they should get. I'd like to suggest how that money could be better spent. Read on!

The need for trained physicians has been critical across Canada and the USA for decades. With more foresight, schools should have responded to this need long ago. They are clearly not producing near enough qualified medicos - period. Universities and professors in their characteristically outmoded bowties continue to wander around hallowed corridors and sculpted campuses blissfully unaware of the needs of the real world. Even if some are aware, they are often victims of less than adequate government funding.

Guess what, folks. According to The Economist, within 10-15 years, scientists will have discovered the means to extend our lives by 10-20 years and within another 10 years or so after that, to extend out lives considerably more, possibly indefinitely. What does that mean to the medical profession? Think about it. Many more older folks will be needing medical treatment and eldercare. We can't cope now! How in blazes are we going to manage with a huge increase in seniors demanding our services?

Mind you, schools are not the only ones to blame here. It is time government took off their own bowties and started paying real attention to what is happening on the street. Surely, governments have futurists who can project and plan for these future events. Any government without a futurist should rush out and hire one immediately! I realize that not everything futurists say gets acted upon, particularly in the political arena. After all, it is all about votes. But consider this - if there is a critical shortage of physicians, how can a responsible government help? To me, there is a clear strategy for governments to adopt and to begin implementing immediately:

Much more government funding at the federal. provincial/state and municipal levels needs to be channelled into providing needed healthcare services and medical provider education. Now!

What would I do with the extra funding?

1. Subsidize medical training! Don't you think a lot more students would opt for a medical degree if it was half the cost of a BA, BBA or BSc - or for that matter even FREE? Do that and within a few years, we could solve that problem.

2. In the short term, we might consider opening the doors to qualified foreign doctors from overseas universities that have been approved by our government. This means easing immigration regulations but, as I suggested, it would be on a short-term basis until our own subsidized system kicked in. On the other hand, if it worked well, why not extend it? Sending medical professors abroad to qualify the resident medical trainers would seem to be a much better use of taxpayers money than setting up yet another lengthy commission - and the result would be much faster.

3. More immediate funding for universities and other medical training facilities. We cannot train more doctors and nurses without the facilities to do so.

4. Expanded hospital and health care facilities. Plainly, there are simply not enough hospital beds around for the number of patients that need them.

5. More seniors' home and long-term care facilities. My mother is going on 90 and is ready for such a home. Do you know, there is up to a two-year wait to get in to many of the better facilities in her area of 40,000 residents? More seniors are on the way and we'd better be ready for them!

Foresight, preparation and immediate action, folks!

Dr. Robert Taylor

Dr. Robert Taylor is an educator, writer and researcher with a futurist bent. He writes articles on many topics. He invites you to visit his blog http://www.salubriousday.net/coffee.htm where a fresh pot of coffee is always on!