MEDICAL SCHOOL WILL BE A SUCCESS

I wish to congratulate the provincial government on its medical school initiative. It took years of government inaction on this problem to get us to where we are today. Put the proper people in charge of the implementation of the medical school and it will be a success.

Doctors in other parts of the country will be easier to attract when they see that we are serious about fixing our health-care problem.

If they are working in a province where they don’t see any progress with the problem, they might jump to a province where they can truly be part of the solution.

I could never understand why the Canadian medical system had such a tight grip on the number of seats in medical schools.

It should go without saying that if the population of country increases from 40 million to 60 million, that there might be a requirement for the number doctors coming out of medical school to increase.

That is not even looking at the increasing numbers of doctors required to apply all the new medical specialties in the medical world, or the number of doctors required by the federal government to run their programs.

I was told today that a high percentage of the P.E.I. students who applied to medical school at Memorial University in Newfoundland were unsuccessful in their application.

If there were 10 applications to the medical school and only one application is successful, don't you think that two or three of the remaining students would make as great a doctor as the one successful one?

Let’s put our Island students first.

The last guy the province had to run health care in the province didn’t believe in change, so he returned to his origins.

The replacement hired knows going in that there is a great challenge ahead and appears to be willing to work towards the ultimate goal.

The most important human resources pieces are in place to make this work. I say, “Get er done.”

Mike Doiron,

St. Ann’s, P.E.I.