I have worked in full service family medicine for 40 years in Victoria. I attended my patients in both hospitals and care homes all over the city ( and did house calls). In my pre-retirement years I did locums and walk in clinic work until I retired at age 66. I would like to offer some observations and suggestions.
I was able to find a doctor from the U.K. to take over my practice. He had 20 years experience there and taught at a medical school.
He had to do all the Canadian exams for doctors, including all the basic science exams done by medical students. This took several years. I also had to supervise him for three years. Ridiculous.
I think the College of Physicians and Surgeons and our medical schools should offer one-year programs for foreign-trained physicians to upgrade their skills to Canadian standards, then give them an appropriate exam. After that, license them for supervised practice for another year.
We clearly need to increase spaces in our medical schools.
We should be training physician assistants to help family doctors with much of the workload in practice. All western countries except sa国际传媒 do this, I believe.
Patients are happy to see the practice assistant for minor problems, leaving the physician free to see the more complicated patients. They should be paid for by government. Most newer family doctors would likely be happy to work in a clinic run by someone else and paid by salary, I think.
Of course, family doctors should be paid more. The Doctors of sa国际传媒 as well as the government have been neglectful in how they have inadequately addressed this issue.
Some new fee items were created for full-service family docs but they always required more work. I found I made 50 per cent more per hour working in a walk-in clinic than I did as a locum for a full-service family doc because of the fee-for-service system.
I would be happy to do some part-time work in a walk-in clinic and feel confident I could competently handle the work, even if I’m not completely up to date with the latest.
However, the requirements from the College and fees make this a non-starter. In order to keep an active licence I needed to work at least eight weeks a year, do 50 hours of continuing medical education, and pay full licensing fees to the College, the Doctors of sa国际传媒 and the Canadian Medical Association, and buy malpractice insurance.
I calculated it took me one month of work to pay the fees when I was working part time. The College could consider some form of limited licence to allow post retirement doctors to continue to offer their service. There would need to be help with the fees also.
