I am fortunate to have a family doctor who is dedicated to her patients in the public network, but I know that so many people are left behind by the health care system. These people do not know who to turn to when they have a health problem because they do not have a doctor to turn to.
The government, however, coldly suggests that they contact a group of doctors united under the banner of the GAP when they need care. They will then be surprised to see which doctor they will come across from one time to the next. But this probably no longer has any importance for the government.
We are in the era of medicine that treats diseases and no longer that of doctors assigned and assigned to the care of particular individuals. Such a level of abstraction is particularly insecure for patients who would like to be able to address a caregiver who knows their file and who has followed them for a long time.
We would like to be convinced that money is not the only sinews of war in the conflicts that have been renewed ad nauseam for so many decades between the government and doctors. The fact remains that the government says it wants value for money when it pays family doctors, and the latter reply that they want fairness with specialist doctors in terms of remuneration. Who will then think of all those worried people who do not have a family doctor? No one.
Because the government considers that the idea that everyone can have their own family doctor is now outdated. It is now thinking of entrusting the health problems of the population to teams of diverse healthcare professionals, not necessarily doctors.
According to the broad outlines of the government project described in this regard, it is envisaged that family doctors will now treat the most urgent and serious cases, and that they will leave minor health problems to other non-medical professionals.
Minister Sonia LeBel candidly stated that many people, including herself, do not need a family doctor. Who can claim absolute certainty of being healthy and staying that way, which is what we wish for Minister LeBel, who, however, has no control over it, like any human being?
The idea that family doctors would eventually only deal with serious cases is frightening. Do we want to relieve the pressure on hospital emergency rooms by making family doctors a kind of emergency physician? Do they have the facilities in their private practices to treat serious cases requiring sophisticated interventions in terms of equipment?
Human relations
Medicine is not just about money, at least not for patients who expect care under a so-called universal health insurance system, which treats fewer and fewer people. Medicine is first and foremost about the relationship between a person who needs care and another who can provide it competently, efficiently, tactfully and humanely.
The philosopher Plato was very interested in medical science; in his text Charmidehe claimed that the practice of medicine is not at all reduced to prescribing medicines to people. In this sense, he gives voice to Socrates, who claims that people must also be treated with incantations. These are beautiful speeches imbued with principles whose wisdom must shine through in the communications between the doctor and his patients, who are not simply bodies without souls.
Anyone who wants to pursue a profession that can serve the common good, and not just his own personal interests, must therefore have the level of wisdom necessary to distinguish between good and evil, both on an individual and collective level.
Let us follow the wisdom of Socrates and call upon the government and doctors to think first of all about sick people who need humane care. I do not know if politics is a vocation, but medicine is and must remain so.
Yet many doctors are ashamed and suffer morally from not being able to give many people the care they often desperately await. The kind of speech that doctors are expected to give to the government, imbued with the selfless spirit of nobility inherent in their vocation as caregivers, must consist of bringing to the attention of those who have the decision-making power the needs of the sick and the means that doctors must have at their disposal to treat them in the best possible conditions.