Sometimes, your actions get results that you don’t expect.
Like this post to the online chat account of a Washington Post restaurant reviewer: “Well Tom your latest review is accompanied by a picture of my husband dining with a woman who isn’t me! Once confronted with photographic evidence, he confessed to having an ongoing affair. Just thought you’d be amused to hear of your part in the drama. This Thanksgiving I’m grateful to you for exposing a cheat!”
(Reviewer Tom Seitsema answered the chat post with, “Please, please, please tell me this is a crank post. I’d hate to learn otherwise.”)
Other times, the results are precisely what you should have expected all along.
If you’re lucky enough to have a family doctor in St. John’s, you know about the problem just from sitting in the waiting room and listening to reception staff answering the phone. “No, Dr. X isn’t taking new patients right now. No, none of the doctors at the clinic are taking new patients right now.”
Take Wednesday’s news conference by the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association (NLMA), where the association released the results of an examination of the need for family doctors in this province. The report suggests that the province needs at least 60 new family physicians right away, let alone the increased number that will be needed for this province’s aging population in the future.
“The need for a plan has now reached a critical level,” NLMA president Charlene Fitzgerald said.
But that should hardly be news to anyone.
If you’re lucky enough to have a family doctor in St. John’s, you know about the problem just from sitting in the waiting room and listening to reception staff answering the phone. “No, Dr. X isn’t taking new patients right now. No, none of the doctors at the clinic are taking new patients right now.”
There are almost as many calls like that as there are patients seeking appointments.
Woe betide you if your family doctor has just announced his or her impending retirement. You only have to look at the rafts of people in towns outside St. John’s who swamp the offices and phone lines every time a family practitioner sets up a new practice there.
Other work done by the NLMA, polling done in September, suggests that some 99,000 Newfoundlanders and Labradorians don’t have a family doctor. That is not by any means a small number. And family doctors have a critical role to play in catching medical issues before they become critical: there are clear savings to the health-care system in the early detection and treatment of a whole host of medical conditions.
Now, it’s fair to say that the NLMA is primarily focused on the interests of its members. But that’s no reason to ignore the clear message in the material it is putting forward.
Dr. John Haggie, the provincial minister of health, has said he disagrees with the NLMA’s position, and with the number of family practitioners they list.
But as any waiting room shows, and like the Washington Post restaurant review proved, sometimes a picture is worth 1,000 words.
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