Halthcare Essay

The healthcare association in Canada is beyond unbearable. There is no doubt in many peoples minds that the system needs to change before its too late. Canada is facing what you would call a "mid-life crisis". Canada is losing more and more doctors, they don't have enough equipment to help patients, and many nurses and doctors are being affected by the work load.

Doctors, especially nurses are not liking the way things are going for the Canadian health care system. Canada currently has 230,000 working nurses, but experts say that is 25,000 short of the requirement. Why is this? The nurses in Canada state "Nursing is a thankless profession. We get no respect from politicians or from the healthcare system-they just don't appreciate our profession" (pg. 24) Every healthcare worker isn't getting the respect needed in order to do their jobs properly. A lot of doctors are leaving to find better jobs because of certain contracts they have to sign. For example, a family physician named Susan Jane Ward moved to Manitoba to start a better more settled down life. But once she was given the contract which stated that she was "required to be on call every other night" (pg. 22) and that since was due for another child in the month of April which was approaching fast she was "not eligible for paid maternity leave" (pg. 22) she needed to get out. Although the healthcare is free in Canada, many doctors don't appreciate when they work their tails off, but get nothing spectacular in return. No wonder we have less and less doctors and nurses every year. To make matters worse, Canada suffers from a ‘chronic doctor drain', with nearly 600 physicians a year going to the United States and other countries. Also, the younger doctors who are training for the profession are not willing to work 80 hour weeks like most of the older retiring doctors. Since you have to work in an environment where people will be coming in 24 hours a day seven days a week, these hours are crucial to put in. Because of this, Dr. David Hawkins, executive director of the Association of Canadian Medical Colleges states that if people don't come to train to be a doctor "for the first time we'll have more doctors retiring than entering the profession". (pg. 25) Working conditions have worsened for nurses too. With hospitals struggling for cash, half of Canada's working nurses now work part time instead of full time with fewer benefits. Hospitals even economized by "reducing the number of nurses aids and support staff. Forcing nurses to add some of those functions to their normal duties". (pg 25) So on top of everything else, nurses are forced to do more work when they are on part time without the many benefits they would be getting if they were on full time. Not a lot of people want to go to school for 4-12 years to become a doctor. Its too much work for most people even though its what they love to do. But Canada's government has an idea that will help people change their minds. They are thinking of bringing in more money to help institutions for medicine. So once the students see an increase in cash flow, there will be an increase in doctors and nurses. Micheal Decter states that "With all that money, there's bound to be a market response. Improvement will not happen quickly, but over the next few years the torrent of new government spending - for training programs, for MRI's and X-Ray machines, for long term care facilities and community services to ease the pressure on hospitals could help breathe new life into an ailing healthcare system" (pg. 25)

Equipment to cure the ill is very crucial. Without hospital equipment there would be no hospitals in Canada. But this is where Canada is headed. Canada is in desperate need for new diagnostic equipment, including magnetic resonance imaging machines (MRI) which costs about 2 million dollars. Don Lee a neuroradiologist, estimates that Canada needs to spend at least 2 billion dollars just to upgrade or replay X-ray equipment, apart from investing in other needed equipment. But in Ottawa the government wants to spend only 1 billion dollars over a two year period to help out these types of situations. However, this will certainly do no good. In Cranbrook, British Columbia doctors describe Cranbrook Regional as "chronically underfunded and frequently ill-equipped" (pg. 26) One doctor shook his head at the memory of a piece of laparoscopic equipment breaking inside a patients abdomen. He says "it has to be replaced, but the next thing we knew, it was fixed and brought back but its 15 years old and should be gone" (pg. 26) Even the surgical tables that are there are being held together with duct tape and surgeries have had to stop because equipment wouldn't work and there were no backup instruments. Alex Chan, an orthopedic surgeon says "In