erg...i hate doctors

[rachelMcK]

If you live in Canada, you probably share this sentiment, but they serious made me angry today. We're facing a major doctors shortage here, so much so that I've onced waited 4 hours in an urgent care clinic just to get a refill prescription! Well, after 2 years of searching, last september I finally found a family dr. I thought I was doing so good. So I got my yearly checkup done and my prescriptions done. Well, today I needed to make an appointment for a refill, call the office and I'm informed that my family dr quit! A month ago!!! I was and still am furious. Nobody called to tell me, no referals for another dr, nothing. The office just told me that two more drs are coming in september and that if I need a refill, I need to go to urgent care for now. I'm sorry but this is pathetic. Honestly, foreign drs that come to Canada can't be drs due to our laws, but they only allow 150 med school student in per year in ontario, i'd say half don't make it through school and half that do go to the states. I'm so furious right now.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? I hope im a little justified to be angry...

[Jenih]

I did have a very similar experience - called to make an appointment and was told our doctor had left the practice. In our case, though, the replacement doctor was already in place and taking on all her previous patients, so it was just a case of getting used to someone new. It IS frustrating, and I did wish that we would have been told about it, but it just doesn't seem to happen that way.

Not to sugar coat it, but I just deal with the frustration by reminding myself that there are a lot of really great things about our system. No one way is perfect, but my child has an incurable disease, and what could have been a financially crippling situation (to the tune of $1000 + per month, perpetuated for years to come!) hasn't cost us an out of pocket dime.

[Edna_E]

I'm in a small community in the States - we also have a problem of doctors coming in for a period of time and then leaving. There are a few that have stayed a long time, but the local hospital contracts to bring some in to try to help provide sufficient medical care for the community - the ER docs don't even live here but come in for a few days a week in cycles and have an apartment they share in the hospital. It is a very disruptive system, but I think is probably better than what we would have if the hospital did NOT step in. I don't understand what changed from a few decades ago when doctors typically set up their practice and stayed there for the duration of theri career. Then again, it seems like most work for corporations rather than having a private practice, so maybe that is all there is to it.

Good luck, and I hope you get a good one the next time around and that it lasts a long time (sounds like a boyfriend, doesn't it?)