RE: STC is broken

[Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Mr. McLauchlan

> Does the mere fact of having had a doctor father
> give you extra leeway?

No, and I made no such claim.  My mention of my
father?s former profession was meant only as an
explanation for why your post caught my attention.

What ?leeway??


> You could read what I said, rather than what you
> wanted me to have said
> so that you could get offended about it.

I did not get offended by it. I said I had no argument
with your feelings or opinions. If now you will read
what I really wrote instead of what you want it to
read, you will see that I said in so many words I was
not writing to castigate you. I don?t know about you
but I?m not angry or upset now, and I wasn?t then.

I admit I misunderstood your aim and I amend my
statements - you did not individually insult and
accuse of unethical conspiracy every doctor in Canada.
Your remarks were directed at the guild that oversee
doctors, not at the doctors. 

However, it still seems to me that you did accuse the
guild of unethical conspiracy. That being the case, my
worry remains. You really have made a public
accusation of wrongdoing against some people, albeit a
different group of people than I thought at first. And
that could be a cause for possible concern about legal
liability. Personally, I hope you get away with it. I
don't like the idea of someone getting into legal
trouble because of a post on this board, but I fear
that it could happen.

My intention, as I explicitly mentioned, was not to
take you to task for a perceived slight of any
relative. You may not wish to believe it, but my post
was written in concern. As I wrote, my feeling was ?Ye
gods, does this guy know how much trouble he could get
into over those words?? Nothing more.


--- "McLauchlan, Kevin"
<Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:

> Does the mere fact of having had a doctor father
> give you extra leeway?
> You could read what I said, rather than what you
> wanted me to have said
> so that you could get offended about it.
> 
> My points were observations about THE GUILD (into
> which you can read
> Ontario Medical Association, and by extension,
> Canadian Medical
> Association, and by further
> extension-due-to-similarity the AMA). 
> 
> As with any guild, members are not the executive.
> All members are
> members because they must be. Only some members are
> members because they
> wish to be. Because the guild has disciplinary
> powers and great
> latitude, members must be very careful what they say
> and do. If they
> offend the wrong people in the positions of power -
> those whose primary
> skill and motivation is political (the ability to
> further themselves in
> organizations) rather than technical (the science
> and practice of
> medicine and direct health care), then their careers
> and livelihoods are
> at risk.
> 
> My own doctor agrees with me - as does my wife's
> doctor. They are both
> overworked and underpaid, as doctors and as mothers.
> They will both be
> retiring sooner than has been traditional for male
> doctors... because
> female doctors traditionally just have more sense in
> that respect (yes,
> that observation is also a generalization which you
> or somebody is free
> to misinterpret as a precise rock-hard claim to
> which you can object and
> take offense.....go nuts.).
> 
> It is a fact, well documented in the press in
> Canada, and especially in
> the province of Ontario, that:
> 
> a) there is a critical shortage of doctors - long
> evident in remote and
> non-urban areas, and growing more critical
> day-by-day in the cities.
> 
> b) it's going to get more critical as the existing
> doctors retire (many
> are boomers who are retiring as their patients do,
> however not only the
> patients but also the doctors are just entering the
> years when they will
> need ever-increasing medical services from the
> remaining practicing
> doctors), and as newly minted doctors take a more
> sensible approach to
> work-life balance -- meaning they won't willingly
> work the 60-to-90 hour
> weeks at multiple clinics and hospitals, each.
> 
> It's also a fact that the medical association
> controls what medical
> teaching establishments are allowed to come into
> existence, and which
> new doctors are allowed to be accredited, and what
> hoops foreign-trained
> doctors must jump through to achieve accreditation,
> despite having
> graduate well from fine schools and despite having
> practiced
> successfully in their countries of origin.
> 
> Rank-and-file doctors not only disagree with the
> restrictiveness,
> they've been raising the alarm for some time. Their
> leaders/masters in
> the upper hierarchy of the associations are only
> lately coming round and
> loosening the reins a little, even though the
> writing on the wall was
> obvious more than a decade ago. . . when they were
> _lowering_ the quotas
> and class sizes at medical schools, citing an
> ostensible oversupply of
> physicians that wasn't even true then and is
> laughably untrue now.  The
> pipe-line is not a fraction as full as it needs to
> be.
> 
> Public pressure is mounting, and even politicians
> are starting to wake
> up and jump out in front - now that they see which
> way the wind blows.
> So what will happen is that the medical
> establishment (not my GP nor the
> dermatologist I saw last month after 7 months of
> waiting, but the upper
> political echelons of their association leadership)
> and the government
> that supplies their clout will "reconsider" and
> suddenly find that most
> of those icky foreign-trained doctors are actually
> fine physicians who,
> instead of remedial (repeat) med-school and three or
> four years of
> supervised OJT, actually need only a quick-and-dirty
> orientation and
> maybe a few English (or French) lessons and they can
> hit the ground
> running. Of course, this will still take a few more
> years to even begin.
> 
> Rank and file doctors - the non-political ones who
> are still in practice
> and haven't saved their health and sanity by
> retiring - will heave a
> sigh of relief as newcomers begin to take up some of
> the enormous
> burden. 
> 
> A little look at history and at human psychology
> shows that that sort of
> conservative, protectionist,
> pull-up-the-ladder-of-the-treehouse
> worldview is the normal outcome of guilds. 
> 
> The people who argue to start one - whether based on
> the STC or some
> other foundation - all assume that they will be
> insiders, or
> "grandfathered". 
> The key would be to get the government clout.
> Otherwise, you can't
> implement the controls that make it worthwhile.
> Being able to exclude
> people is valuable only if by doing so you keep them
> from legally being
> employed in your/their field, or at least make it
> unlikely, difficult
> and marginal for them. Make no mistake; you have to
> exclude people, a
> lot of them. Setting the bar too low dilutes the
> brand, the cachet.
> Setting it too high makes for great exclusivity, but
> not enough
> dues-paying fodder... er... members to be
> attractive.
> 
> If you and I lived in China, and foreigners
> complained about what
> China-the-government/regime was doing, you would
> understand yourself and
> your father and all your neighbors to have been
> maligned. That's a
> cultural thing that has a lot to do with the fact
> that they've had only
> one government for a few successive generations.
> We're seeing that
> sociological quirk in the counter-protests to the
> Olympic-torch
> protests. We in the west like to change our
> governments (at least the
> overtly political, elected portions) whenever we get
> tired of them, so
> we don't identify government with country with "me".
>  Similarly, people
> who are members of the AMA, the CMA, the OMA, etc
> are members, not
> because it-is-me-and-I-am-it, but because it was a
> requirement of
> working in their chosen field. Only some_ of those
> members have the
> political gene and are compelled to become insiders
> and seekers after
> higher echelons and positions of power. Those are
> the members who begin
> to think "organization-equals-me" and you insult my
> gang, you insult me
> (or vice versa).   
> 
> "Attacking" the organization (in this case as an
> example of a type to
> which we might aspire if we are collectively bent
> that way) is not the
> same as attacking the profession or the calling. Nor
> is it the same as
> attacking the ordinary members who have little
> choice but to be members
> (by the law of your country, as by the law of mine),
> and who don't
> necessarily agree with some/many of the guild's
> policies.  You are free
> to see the situation differently and to choose to be
> offended 
=== message truncated ===



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