doctor shortage

Izzy Sommers

7-140 Elmview Street, West

Welland, ON L3C 4K7, Canada

(905) 788-2237

canadizzy@yahoo.ca

March 29, 2009

The Editor

The Welland Tribune

East Main and River Road

Welland, Ontario, Canada

tribune@wellandtribune.ca

RE: Doctors: Can’t live with them; can’t live without them…

Dear folks,

Please consider for publication the following essay. It is original and personal and has never been published elsewhere. It really shouldn’t be modified in any way without consultation. I believe it is appropriate and accurate to the current time. Thank you in advance for your consideration and any payment you would consider fair.

Very sincerely yours.

Izzy Sommers, MD

THE DOCTOR SHORTAGE, EH?

An Essay by Izzy Sommers

This is not my first attempt to answer the question for all of Welland in it’s Tribune: Why are there no new doctors in Welland? At last count, Aggie, at Northtown, estimated that Welland was in need of 17 new doctors. She was and is actively recruiting physicians to come to her office and other medical offices in the Welland area.

It turns out that Maclean’s magazine recently ran an article addressing the problem of the “doctor shortage in Canada.” Their conclusion is just as much off the mark as most of Welland’s, including it’s spokesmen at the Welland Tribune. Please allow me to fill you in.

In January,1992, after my second costly divorce and episode of severe mental exhaustion, my sister and brother-in-law, here in Welland, offered to put me up and put up with me,until I could get back on my own two feet. Dr. Gerry Alexander interviewed me during a 3 hour tour of the Niagara Peninsula in his Posche. On the spot, he offered me a place in his group, the Northtown Medical Associates, as soon as I renewed my Ontario/Canadian license. He apparently told his staff, “We are lucky to have him here.” By April 27, 1992, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the CPSO, reviewed my medical school transcripts and the record of my internship at Toronto General Hospital, and pronounced me eligible to receive a full license to practice medicine and surgery within the rules and regulations of the Province of Ontario. I chose to join a group known as the General Practice Psychotherapy Association, the GPPA, which promoted the practice of psychotherapy by family doctors, able to make diagnoses like psychiatrists and write prescriptions while doing cognitive and behavioural modification therapy and other psychotherapies for the benefit of the patients with mild to moderate anxiety and depression who found it impossible to get in to see a psychiatrist and impossible to afford a psychologist and impossible to afford the very expensive drugs. I was the only GPP in town. There were about 5 in St. Catharines, Fort Erie and Niagara Falls, who did only psychotherapy. There were about 250 in the Greater Toronto Area. At present there are none in the Niagara Peninsula, as far as I know. Despite resistance by the Psychiatrists, The Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan, OHIP and the CPSO, the GPPA thrived and became a legitimate section of the Ontario Medical Association, the OMA. I was an active member of the GPPA and served on its board for a short time. I believe, at its peak, there were 500 practicing members across Canada. I sincerely believe that the pressures by OHIP, CPSO and similar provincial governmental regulating agencies have served to reduce the number of GPP’s and reduce the enthusiasm for its practice.

Whatever anyone else says, when a provincial agency like OHIP joins with a licensing body, like the CPSO and sends the OPP to arrest you, you can’t help but feel guilty and ashamed. In order to avoid a harmful, libelous assault on your person and on your practice, you will do or say almost anything to kowtow in and pay the money and hope it all goes away quietly. The threat of having to resign in public, accepting the trumped up charges as legitimate, is real. Two doctors, one here in Welland, a Chinese Paediatrician with a world famous concert pianist daughter, committed suicide. The other one, of which I am aware, threw her newborn baby into an oncoming subway train and then threw herself to her death.

If that doesn’t take the fun out of practicing medicine in Ontario, how about the hospital staff of Welland General who control credentialing of doctors and staff privileges. When a doctor would have considered coming to Welland, he, or she, would have faced an awful truth. He wouldn’t have been able to get staff privileges at the hospital. Without staff privileges, one would have to give up a patient who needed hospitalization. A patient would have a serious question to ask about the doctors questionable background unless the hospital gave him a kind of support as expected. Perhaps the community, like the Mayor and his council should have more to say about who gets credentialed instead of being blackballed by an exclusive and excluding staff. Drs. Tucker and Chen, both new members of the Northtown Medical Associates were refused hospital privileges, as was I. All of our credentials were in excellent condition with clean reports from all relevant agencies, including the previous licensing bodies and the police departments and the state/provincial police departments and the federal; levels including the RCMP, the FBI and the CIA. Tucker was so good; he was accepted to teach as an associate professor at McMaster University Medical School. Chen was so good, he was given privileges at both St. Catharine’s Hospitals and worked in both ERs of the St. Catharine’s General and Hotel Dieu Hospitals. Instead of bringing their families to Welland, they took their families elsewhere.

Let’s face it; Welland would be a perfect place for a young doctor first starting out. He would have a large practice in no time. He would have many patients eager to have their own newly graduated physician. They would be happy to show the young doctor and his new family the great bicycle paths, the inexpensive yet lovely housing, the myriads of Tim Horton’s, the great fishing, the great beauty of Niagara, the great schools at all levels including Niagara College and Brock University, and the welcoming, friendly folks that live here. Without the support of a hospital staff, he would be stigmatized and paralyzed. Patients in the ER were told by the nurses and the doctors that Drs. Tucker, Chen and I were not legitimate doctors. They were told to get “real doctors.”

In the face of this, it is ironic that the Welland Tribune should choose to smear Dr. Tucker in such an unfair way without presenting or even attempting to represent his side of the story. Their follow-up articles were much better. Thank you. Reporting is what a newspaper does. Reporting only one side of a story is what a good newspaper should be avoiding.

Thank you for listening.

Izzy Sommers, MD

Welland, Canada