Was talking to Dr. Owen yesterday, and he looked at me with his British stare and asked me in his English accent (a real one, not like the English fakery running amok at this present moment) what I was going into come fall. I told him about physio and about the requirements and program and he responded that he thought it was a very solid profession. I was asked whether or not I would work in a hospital or in a private clinic, to which I responded I'd love to work both - I love the hospital environment but I do enjoy making money so a private clinic would be pretty nice.
Dr. Owen pondered for a second then responded, "You know what though? It doesn't really matter where you work. The point is that physio can help people. You can really give back a person's life by doing physio." Case in point, Dr. Owen starts talking about his hamstring and how hopefully physio will allow him to keep playing soccer (which he loves more than angiography and his 2 PM tea, combined).
"Why do you want to become a health care professional?" is often answered with, "I want to help people." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the cliché is as trite as it is true. We are who we are because we make people better, and that's what we should aspire to do whether we are nurses, techs, assistants or doctors. While money certainly is a nice concept to think about, the ultimate goal at the end of the day is helping someone recover.
So to segway, I thought it wise for Anne Doig, our new Canadian Medical Association chief, to mention that despite her background in only public-health settings, she could care less about public vs. private because in the end it's only patient health care that matters. Let it be known that Doig is strongly pro public-health regardless of if she says so or not, which should be interesting to watch as Duckett attempts to implement his privatized-esque system of health care.
The journal ran an interesting exposé on the CEO that everyone loves to hate and mentioned that one of Duckett's plans is to hire more LPNs instead of RNs because it saves money. Basically, our primary line of health care professionals are nurses, and hiring more LPNs results in a less experienced group of individuals working in the trenches. This may save money, but the effect becomes poor health care (because LPNs are less trained) and a strained system (because RNs now have an increased workload). However, one of the things Duckett made clear to say was "If I am paying the same in the public sector as the private for, say, a cataract operation, and the quality is the same, should I care whether it is done by the public or private sector? That is my position." I agree with this statement, but Duckett is under the fallacy that with his reform, the private sector will have the same quality. With the changes he is making, he is threatening the quality of health care and discouraging professionals from staying in Alberta, which will slowly crumble the system. There has been talk about instituting a $6 pay cut for RNs - that in itself will make the decision for nurses easier in moving elsewhere. Meanwhile Duckett sits back enjoying his $575,000 salary.
The fact of the matter is that this ISN'T quality health care, and it's detrimental to patients. While public and private can co-exist (it already exists, you can go elsewhere to pay for an MRI an not have to wait or you can choose to wait it out in public hospitals for free), it must be instituted correctly with no harm to the quality of care. Unfortunately for us, Duckett is first and foremost an economist (sorry Jia, I say 'economist' with the utmost disdain) and not a health care professional - he hasn't seen what it is like to be on the daily grind and does not know how important it is to create policies that make sense from a health care worker standpoint. He does not foster a positive environment for staff or patients, and will drive our health care system to the ground.
***
In the health hotseat" (Calgary Herald)
"Dr. Duckett performs radical surgery" (Edmonton Journal - Letters to the Editor)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
reading
now:
done:
the giveron a daily basis
the past
me likey
- brains
- communist daughter
- cool calm pete
- crosswords
- e.e. cummings
- green apple green tea
- how monstrously fast i type
- imogen heap
- jazzy jester, toyz & nasty ray
- lions
- lookbook
- m.c. escher
- Magdalene
- making corners
- metatheory
- monsters inc
- my earlobes
- palindromes
- primer
- radiohead
- ratatouille
- really colorful shoes
- sarah slean
- shelby & blacky
- steve reich
- stream of consciousness
- time traveller's wife
Posts
6$ pay cut!??!?! I heard that UNA sent Duckett a five page proposal, and he sent a 95 page one back to them.
ReplyDeletehahaha maybe... i think healthcare reform is pretty complicated and that canada's got far from the perfect system. it's a lot nicer than the US system, but I don't think its the best in the OECD and that leaves room for improvement
ReplyDeleteof course patient outcomes are #1 at the end of the day, but knowing they are the end goal doesn't provide any direction into how to achieve optimal patient outcomes. for example, if you say that we shouldn't hire LPNs since they are less trained than RNs, I could extend that reasoning to say we shouldn't hire RNs or NPs since they are less trained than MDs. Of course, that is flawed reasoning since they do different things, but ultimately everything needs to be informed by evidence, not ideology
and to skirt around the topic of money while just focusing on patient outcomes is ridiculous. we could way improve patient outcomes dramatically if instead of spending say 20% of our tax dollars we spent 100% of our tax dollars on healthcare - like it or not, healthcare is rationed based on the amount of money society is willing to put into it, which isn't infinite
this doesn't say anything about the public vs. private provision debate, but once again to just assume private care lowers quality is a ideological assumption rather than a factual one - i do believe most european countries (often cited to have better healthcare than canada) have parallel private delivery.
as to the issue of pay - another complicated topic. sure duckett makes his 575,000, but that's less than most cardiologists and radiologists and opthamologist and a whole whack of over doctors do. so do they deserve all that money? i don't really think so, and i think the point is that JUST WORKING IN THE HEALTHCARE PROFESSION DOESN'T MAKE YOU A BETTER PERSON, ONE WHO IS FREE FROM AVARICE OR SELF-INTEREST - why the heck do you think everyone wants to go into med in the first place? I'm betting the entrance gpa wouldn't be 3.9 if they averaged a teacher's salary. Gosh I can't emphasize this point enough - what makes the health worker happy doesn't translate 100% into what makes the patient better, otherwise we'd be voting across the board 100% pay increases for everyone who worked in a hospital. now, i don't think a pay cut is necessarily the way to go since it really infuriates people, but often i wonder how we left healthcare salaries inflate so high in the first place - do you think you DESERVE more just because you're working in healthcare, because I sure don't think that entitles you to anything.
i do agree that transparency and consultation is very important, and it doesn't sound like duckett as been doing a very good job with this one. to be honest, i don't know how things will look in alberta after duckett's done his deeds, but i do hope whatever he does is evidence-based rather than ideologically (right OR left-wing, since neither is ideal) based
Jia,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the idea of what's realistic vs. what's ideal. You should know by now that I take a pretty extreme view of things when I see them, so an ideological perspective of health care is always in my mind.
The fact of the matter is the world revolves around money regardless of how much we would like it not to, so I am with you on the concept that skirting around cash would be ridiculous. I also am with you when you say that money is in a health worker's best interests, and that often health workers are paid an over inflated amount.
I do want to stress, however, that I am not saying private is better than public or visa versa. I am merely suggesting that Duckett doesn't seem to have thought through his plan for implementation of a faux-privatized system in Alberta, and as a result, both patients and staff alike will feel the consequences on many levels. I think you got me a little wrong on the idea that I believe private equals bad, because it doesn't. My opinion on the ideal health care system would be both public and private co-existing - one could choose whatever stream they wish to take without detriment to their care.
My biggest concern is what Duckett is doing to the QUALITY of our health care system. I'm glad you admitted your idea of only hiring MDs rather than RNs or NPs was a little ridiculous because they do perform entirely separate tasks. It's more like hiring a physio assistant to do a physio's job - I'm sure they could learn it but it would take longer and I'm not so sure the quality would be as high since there’s no theory behind it, only experience.
My primary concern is that patient care does not get worse than it already is. I'm okay with it not getting any better while he's implementing his reform, but if it takes a turn for the worse, it definitely does not impress me. I say Duckett is doing a very poor job right now, and he has lots left to improve on if we're to come out of this in a few years with a reformed health care system that meets his standards of economic savings.
PS. We do not deserve more money no matter what job we do - health care or not.
In reality, when you have to pay the bills and support your kids and keep your wife around, these matters are important. Consequently, if you want to keep your health care workers around and not have them move elsewhere and cripple your system, taking away a large sum of money from their current pay is not an effective means of keeping them around. Keeping them happy and keeping them around are not the same thing - you can make them slightly less happy and they'll still stay around (say, a $2 pay cut). I’m saying that sacrificing the current quality of health care in favor of saving money is just as unrealistic as spending vast amounts of money to get the best health care possible. There is always a balance in this world – we have it pretty good right now but AHS is not doing a good job of keeping it this way or making it better.
I do think, however, that helping people is a good thing. I think we do deserve to be a little impressed with ourselves in a health care profession because we are making a very direct difference to a person’s health, whether in hospital making a regular salary or in a third-world country working for coconuts.
I think health care is rewarding, not that it deserves rewards.
Hehe, Dr. Owen. =)
ReplyDelete