Canadian Health Care

Many people have a problem with the Canadian health care system, and I am one of them. It’s inefficient and inconsistent. Doctors are mostly apathetic professionals making rounds through the small, dingy rooms of public clinics. Success is measured by the number of people they manage to send home from their clinics – cured or not.

It’s obvious that this is important. The health care system is meant to care for our health, and if it doesn’t do that, we have a serious problem.

Shouldn’t health be the main priority of the health care system? Shouldn’t doctors want to make their patients well again, as soon as possible? Shouldn’t efficacy, not ease, be the criteria by which doctors evaluate treatment?

You might ask what right I have to be talking about this. Well, I’ve been in and out of waiting rooms and doctors’ offices and labs pretty often in the last few years. In April of 2011, I caught a virus. At first, it seemed like a run-of-the-mill thing. I was tired, and spent my entire Easter break in bed, thinking it would go away on its own. When it didn’t, I booked an appointment with my doctor. She sent me for a few standard blood tests, and then… I waited.

The policy with these tests is that the doctor’s office will only call if the tests come back positive. Mine didn’t, but I was still sick three weeks later, when the results were supposed to have come in, so I went back to her office. She confirmed that none of the tests had come back positively and sent me for a few more tests.

The cycle repeated itself, with all the test results coming in negatively, the doctor failing to contact me, and me revisiting her office every few weeks for the next two and a half months.

At this point, I was completely fed up with the system. I had been sick for two and a half months, and I hadn’t been diagnosed. My doctor was sending me for two or three blood tests at a time, and she didn’t seem to be concerned about how long my illness had lasted. I had been home from school for the entire duration of the sickness, barely able to do anything except for lie in bed. I was having brief hallucinations and my memory was faulty. I was scared, and she didn’t care.

That was went I walked into the office. When I walked out, I was infuriated. Since none of the tests thus far had come back positively, she told me, she thought it was a rare virus. She specifically told me that it must be “one that isn’t often tested for.” Then she sent me home.

I had no prescription. I had no blood test requisition sheet. All I had was my doctor’s feeble assurance that it would probably go away on its own in a little while: the health care system had given up on me. I was no longer a priority, and it didn’t matter that I was sick and scared and insecure.

I am not the only person who has been treated this way by Canadian medical professionals. The system is inherently problematic, and it fosters an environment of coldness and indifference. Ask someone who has experienced it firsthand – when patients are not truly cared for and health is no longer the first priority, can Canadians still boast about our health care system?

I say no.