Medicine is about relationships
Re: Focus training on meeting public’s needs; Priority should be on finding doctors passionate about doing jobs that need to be done, Letters, Jan. 6.
I share letter- writer Susan Irwin’s concern about her inability to find a family doctor to replace her retiring physician.
After 50 years of practising medicine, it is abundantly clear that many patients need a longterm supportive relationship with a family doctor who knows them well and can advocate on their behalf in a complex medical environment.
Why are there not enough family doctors to deal with many like Irwin who desperately need this type of care? In my class there were 55 graduates; two years later there were 44.
The population of B. C. then was about 1.6 million. UBC medicine now graduates over 250 doctors with a population of 4.6 million, five times as many doctors for 2.7 times the population.
Where are all these extra doctors? Working shifts in a walkin clinic is a very attractive alternative to opening one’s own office with all that entails, or committing oneself to a fullservice family practice clinic.
There are many reasons for this change over the last decades, but I and many others feel that the discontinuation of the rotating internship is a major contributing factor, forcing medical students to choose a career in third year, before many have had an opportunity and the exposure to sample all the various careers available.
The rotating internship allowed one to be a licensed family doctor, often with others more experienced, and to become aware of the benefits of that choice, put some money aside and likely make a more informed decision of a future career, specialty or not.
Many of us who did a rotating internship were convinced it was a poor move at the time and Irwin is experiencing the revenge of unintended consequences.
Much knowledge and many technical advances have been made in medicine, but what is often forgotten is that the basis of medicine remains the interaction and long- term relationship between caring physicians and their patients. MICHAEL M. O’BRIEN, MD Surrey