Read Stéphanie Grammond’s editorial
Where are the nurse practitioners?
Where are the front line nurse practitioners? There is still a lot of resistance to interprofessional practice that would be more effective for the good of all. Better use of their skills is undoubtedly an avenue to be implemented. Furthermore, it should be noted that the term “family doctor” is totally inappropriate. Doctors don’t follow families. There should be front-line family clinics integrated into CLSCs where various professionals would work in collaboration for a real follow-up of families and seniors.
Nicole Ricard, retired nurse
Could I have been diagnosed earlier?
I read your editorial with interest. I am a 61 year old female without a family doctor. I signed up for the government’s access window as soon as it was created, in 2015 or 2016. Still no news. We are therefore talking about a wait of 5 to 6 years, that is to say from 1825 to 2190 days, far from the average delay of 604 days. I was a non-vulnerable person with no health issues. A year ago, I had to go to the emergency room for persistent stomach aches. Diagnosis: aggressive stage 3-4 ovarian cancer. I still wonder today if I had had a family doctor, could I have been diagnosed earlier? The doctor whom I had consulted without an appointment, for the same ailments, had prescribed a simple urine test. The latter seemed to consider my discomforts as being psychosomatic. This person did not know me and did not take me seriously. He made me doubt how I really felt. I am now one of the vulnerable. And I’m still waiting.
Ginette Archambault
Without a doctor since 2018
My wife and I, 69 and 66, in good health, have been without a family doctor since 2018, and the system which previously gave us a possible date to have a doctor since the spring tells us that it is not no longer able to predict when we will have a doctor. Great success from the various governments!
Joel halou
The gap between average and reality
I am a patient who is described as non-vulnerable and although the average is 604 days, it is 1302 days in my case. I fully understand what an average is, but there is a nasty gap between a 604 day average and the reality of 1302 days.
Robert ahier
A real first line
Say goodbye to family physicians who do not fulfill their mandate, long live specialized nurse practitioners! They cost less and have more time for patients. They should be present en masse in all CLSCs, as a team with nurse clinicians, social workers, etc. We would then have a real first line!
Eric Robert
Retirement without relief
I completely agree. Being a specialist myself, I often have to make up for the lack of family doctors. And the fact that doctors can retire without ensuring that a colleague takes over is unacceptable! If one of our colleagues leaves the practice, the rest of the team must take care of their patients. It should be the same with family physicians.
Danielle Talbot, hemato-oncologist, CISSS de Laval
Structural and societal problem
The problem is structural and societal. Young doctors are mostly women who, very quickly, at the beginning of their practice, have children and take several months off. And when they start working again, they work fewer hours because of the family load. In addition, all young doctors must work at least 12 hours per week in the public, either in emergencies, in hospital or in CHSLDs. Not to mention that young people promote work-family balance, so they want to work less. As for patients without a family doctor, their number will increase with the many retirements. Young doctors will not be able to absorb all these patients.
André Rodrigue
I do not believe it anymore
I had a family doctor, but every time I called to make an appointment, her secretary would tell me her schedule was full and to call back in a month. 1er of the month, so I called to be told that it was full, to call back the following month. And so on. I did ask for an appointment in two months, if necessary, but the lady explained to me that she only opens the schedule one month at a time. Ridiculous nonsense! I asked to be removed from her patient list since I had not been able to see her for five years. I have been on a doctor’s waiting list for three years. I do not believe it anymore. For eight years, it is therefore to the emergency room that I have been going …
Alan charles
Involve nurses more
As a medical specialist, I am in a good position to see that the lack of support from primary care physicians has major consequences for the entire system. I have to continue to follow several patients who do not have a family doctor for relatively minor health problems, which prevents me from seeing patients who would need my expertise. The pandemic and the retirement of many elderly family physicians who were caring for significant numbers of patients made the problem worse. Especially since these abandoned patients almost always become orphans in their turn. In addition, another perverse effect of the increase in total compensation, in addition to the limitation of patients followed, is the earlier retirement. If family physicians who retired at age 70 a few years ago now retire at age 60, that’s the equivalent of 10 years, or almost a quarter of their ‘working life’. a doctor who goes up in smoke, so nothing to solve the problem in the long term … The only solution I see to this problem, in addition to the solutions you mentioned, is to involve nurses more in the care and patient follow-up. The whole aspect of patient screening could be done without the involvement of primary care physicians, and would prevent many long-term problems. Why does a patient have to go to a doctor to be screened for diabetes or colon cancer? But since it is these simple patients who are paying for the doctors, and that we are already short of personnel in the network, it is not tomorrow the day before that the problem will be solved!
The Dr Luc Lanthier, specialist in general internal medicine, CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS