"A shameful waste of valuable manpower"

19 posts / 0 new

Mon, 2009-08-31 10:58

toddsschneider

Quebec has the smallest proportion of foreign-trained doctors among its health-care practitioners, the Canadian Institute for Health Information has reported. With barely one in 10 of its doctors trained abroad, Quebec trails all other provinces ...

Health Minister Yves Bolduc suggested that one of the reasons Quebec has the lowest proportion of foreign-trained doctors is the French proficiency requirement ...

Comlan Amazou, president of Quebec's Association des médecins d'ailleurs, believes many international medical graduates are arbitrarily rejected ...

Mon, 2009-08-31 11:05

martin dufresne

Ah if only we spoke White here in Quebec, eh toddsschneider?...

Mon, 2009-08-31 19:52

Coyote

I wonder what it must be like to wake up each morning, realize anew that the sky indeed remains blue, and bemoan that fact.

Tue, 2009-09-01 09:17

toddsschneider

"It isn't good enough to simply say that more doctors are in the pipeline - which, it's true, they are. Or that the province is trying to convince the physicians' governing body to speed up the process of validating international medical graduates' credentials - which might be true."

I suppose Comlan Amazou, president of Quebec's Association des médecins d'ailleurs, must be an angryphone as well.

And the fact that we are below OECD standards of per-capita doctors ("frontline medical care") is something to gloat over.

Tue, 2009-09-01 09:50

Unionist

Physicians who would like the legal ability to practise their profession and see patients ought to be able to show some understanding of the language spoken by more than 85% of the population - wherever in the world we're talking about.

Tue, 2009-09-01 10:08

remind

Do Drs Without Borders know the languages of every country they go to?

Is language more important than patient care and those who have to go without Drs and timely appointment getting?

Tue, 2009-09-01 10:09

martin dufresne

Well said. And part of the problem is fully bilingual doctors leaving for Ontario and the U.S. after getting a top medical education at Quebec taxpayers' expense.

Tue, 2009-09-01 10:22

Unionist

remind wrote:

Do Drs Without Borders know the languages of every country they go to?

Is language more important than patient care and those who have to go without Drs and timely appointment getting?

I take it you don't think a family doctor needs to speak and understand the same language as her patients?

I take it you believe that Doctors Without Borders just stick in a thermometer and apply a stethoscope before injecting or operating - and there's no translator around (as a minimum) to fully obtain patient history and report on symptoms and explain to the patient what's going to happen?

I take it you'd be happy to have unilingual French-speaking family physicians in your community who couldn't pass a simple English-proficiency test?

Martin hit the nail here. Québec stopped training new physicians in the late 1990s, besides offering insane early retirement buyouts, in a failed neo-liberal effort to contain healthcare spending. It still doesn't treat its healthcare professionals properly (especially family physicians, nurses, etc.), so the brain drain is in full swing.

Solutions are needed - but they do [b]NOT[/b] include dropping decades-old language requirements for practising physicians.

Tue, 2009-09-01 10:52

remind

Unionist wrote:
I take it you don't think a family doctor needs to speak and understand the same language as her patients?

Nope, and you answered your own question with your next question to me.

Quote:
I take it you believe that Doctors Without Borders just stick in a thermometer and apply a stethoscope before injecting or operating - and there's no translator around (as a minimum) to fully obtain patient history and report on symptoms and explain to the patient what's going to happen?

This answers your first question to me, translaters can be hired until the Drs have appropriate language skills, patient care is more important.

Quote:
I take it you'd be happy to have unilingual French-speaking family physicians in your community who couldn't pass a simple English-proficiency test?

If we were short on Drs, you betcha. And actually we have Drs whose english is severely lacking.

Quote:
Martin hit the nail here. Québec stopped training new physicians in the late 1990s, besides offering insane early retirement buyouts, in a failed neo-liberal effort to contain healthcare spending. It still doesn't treat its healthcare professionals properly (especially family physicians, nurses, etc.), so the brain drain is in full swing.

Solutions are needed - but they do [b]NOT[/b] include dropping decades-old language requirements for practising physicians.

Oh I see you would rather have people die from a lack of Drs than allow them to use translators, until they can get French skills. That seems a bit cold to me.

Tue, 2009-09-01 10:56

#10

Unionist

Thanks for the answers, remind - but hiring translators (!) full-time for physicians who don't speak French, and doctors not needing to communicate with patients at all, and Quebeckers dying because of language policy - it all kind of leaves me not knowing how to continue this conversation. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I just hope any doctor you visit is able to take a history from you. I know I would expect the same from mine.

Tue, 2009-09-01 11:06

#11

M. Spector M. Spector's picture

Remind displays a stunningly cavalier disregard for the right of Quebec francophones to be treated by doctors who speak their own language!

It's as if she's telling quebeckers thay should be satisfied to make do with a médecins-sans-frontières-type system. After all, if it's good enough for Haiti or Colombia it should be good enough for Quebec.

Tue, 2009-09-01 11:11

#12

remind

Unionist, immigrants to Canada, who do not speak English, have to see Drs, but yet are able to recieve patient care from them anyway through the service of translators.

Drs can learn French and until they do translators can be used, it is that simple.

Tue, 2009-09-01 11:13

#13

remind

Mspector, I happen to believe that persons having access to medical care is primary, language is secondary.

Tue, 2009-09-01 11:26

#14

M. Spector M. Spector's picture

Now you want to treat Quebec francophones like immigrants in their own country?

This just gets worse and worse. Maybe you should give it a rest.

Tue, 2009-09-01 11:33

#15

martin dufresne

To be fair to remind, most Quebeckers, including Francophones, think that the Collège des Médecins is pursuing corporatist interests by keeping qualified foreign-born MDs away from practice for reasons other than linguistic proficiency.

Tue, 2009-09-01 11:44

#16

remind

hmm funny, spector, I think any rational thinking person would realize it is cheaper and a hellva lot quicker to teach foreign Drs french, than it is to train Drs for at least 7 years. Especially if they are running off elsewhere, after they are trained.

Ya, I know that martin, read a piece on it awhile back now, but I was not going to get into it.

Some people it seems would rather people die, than have access to medical care.

Tue, 2009-09-01 11:49

#17

Unionist

Québec offers free French language education to anyone who comes here from anywhere.

Tue, 2009-09-01 12:06

#18

remind

Well there ya go, even cheaper than training Drs, who apparently leave anyway, for at least 7 years, eh, and so is hiring a translator for a few months until french is up to speed.

Tue, 2009-09-01 13:45

#19

martin dufresne

The issue is not mostly language - rest toddsscheider's soul - it is mostly the Collège des Médecins test. Most foreign-born doctors fail this test because the exam bears more on academic knowledge, as learned in Quebec universities, than on actual medical expertise, which these doctors have but doesn't correspond to our current medical curriculum.

AND the foreign-born MDs that do acquire this Quebec university training tend to leave, along with Quebec-born bilingual and anglophones, for greener pastures. And there there are those who opt out of general practice and the public sector for specialized highly-lucrative niches in the private sector, a pattern that the Charest government and the PQ have been facilitating.