Sunday. 7 a.m. I cycle in the rain towards the family medicine group where I am on call for the weekend.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
The care we provide is very simple. There is nothing heroic about them. Welcoming a migrant family without a health insurance card, talking with a parent and her feverish child, observing the breathing of a coughing baby, listening to an elder who has difficulty walking, encouraging a young mother and her sick daughter, drawing to pool our knowledge, prescribe an x-ray or banana antibiotics.
The patients who consult me are brilliant and informed: they have observed the signs and symptoms, put their stories in order, carefully weighed the need or not to consult, already put in place the essentials of the treatment plan.
An immigrant dad tells me that with the experience of his children’s colds, he has become a “half-doctor”. And he’s right.
However, he consults because he could not find acetaminophen (Tylenol) in pharmacies, due to a shortage.
I sometimes have the feeling of living in two parallel realities. On the one hand, that of the political and media discourse where the crises of emergencies and the health system call for ever more costly investments in hospitals and technology.
On the other hand, the reality of ordinary care experienced in my community. A world where the simplest, least expensive and most essential care – welcoming, listening, taking the time, reassuring, advising – is offered not only by health professionals, but above all by the patients themselves, the parents, grandparents and citizens.
Of the 50 people we saw over the weekend, none needed to go to the emergency room. Our walk-in beaches filled up in minutes. How many citizens couldn’t get in? Why is it impossible to find acetaminophen in many community pharmacies when it is the safest and least expensive treatment for fever and pain relief? Why are the simplest treatments the hardest to find?