Usually they were searching for reassurance that the care plan was “safe”, that waiting was reasonable often my answer was that it was neither safe nor reasonable. Rarely was the request a direct ask for expedited care. I usually became engaged by some passing comment or question often over coffee, at a party or as a result of a parting comment as a patient left clinic (“Doctor, this is not a heart problem, but…). Most of the patients for whom I advocated were uncomfortable advocating themselves, even when their illnesses were grave. While I did not meet frank hostility, it seemed that both patients and some physicians had come to grudgingly accept prolonged waiting for health care as the Canadian norm.
When multiple interventions were required an element of advocacy fatigue developed. During my conversations with physicians to accelerate care or connect with a GP I sometimes felt I was intruding. The “system” was not working and it concerned me that without ad hoc intervention people’s health care could easily fall through the cracks. This blog was inspired by 2 particularly intense weeks recently in which I had to advocate a lot, both to accelerate health care for several patients with serious health issues and to coordinate finding of a family physician (GP) for several others. This blog deals with the mythological queue for health care in Canada, highlights the essential role for advocacy in ensuring timely and safe access to care and proposes 6 suggestions to ultimately reduce waiting and create a system that is less reliant on advocacy.Īdvocacy is part of every doctor’s responsibility and is a skill we teach to medical students as part of their CanMEDs roles. Queue (Oxford English Dictionary):A line or sequence of people or vehicles waiting their turn to be attended to or to proceed.Origins: Late 16th century as a heraldic term denoting the tail of an animal.
This means that, assuming that each person waits for only one procedure, 2.9% of Canadians are waiting for treatment in 2017.” “It is estimated that, across the 10 provinces, the total number of procedures for which people are waiting in 2017 is 1,040,791.
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