Nov 10
22
Should human rights dictate your medical care?
We know that there are huge inefficiences in Canada’s medical systems and we support private, for-profit health care delivery. But we get very queezy about the idea of ideology and human rights dictating the terms and conditions of medical care as in the case of Quebec, reported in the article below. That would be adding one problem on top of another rather than providing a genuine solution.
The Saskatoon StarPhoenix – November 22, 2010
Doctors deserve justice
The Montreal Gazette
The Quebec Human Rights Commission earned its pay with last week’s report on why foreign-trained doctors find it so difficult to practise here, while more than two million Quebecers lack access to a family doctor.
However, the response from the province’s medical schools is cause for alarm – and firm action.
Quebec is short 1,100 family doctors, although hundreds of foreign doctors are here, unable to practise. Before a foreign-trained doctor can apply for a residency in a Quebec hospital he or she must pass a Quebec College of Physicians “equivalency exam.” But this doesn’t explain why the province’s medical faculties left residency positions vacant rather than allocate them to foreign-trained doctors. The commission found that medical faculties used unverified criteria and it said prejudice and subjectivity could, and did, play a role.
Shamelessly, the medical schools resisted the findings, suggesting even foreign-trained doctors who pass the QCP test are sometimes unlikely to succeed because they don’t know the system. The commission has ordered the Health Department to insist that medical faculties fill residency positions, that universities recognize foreign-trained doctors’ degree equivalency; and that medical faculties set up objective ways of evaluating residency applications. We hope the ministry will co-operate vigorously.