Celebrate doctors by fighting for quality health care

Dr. Alykhan Abdulla offers gratitude to students, colleagues, and patients

May 1 is National Doctors' Day, an opportunity to celebrate and recognize the ongoing commitment that physicians make to patients, families and communities.

This day goes back to 2010 when the Canadian Medical Association wanted to celebrate medical professionals. It chose May 1 to honour Dr. Emily Stowe, Canada's first female physician, who was born May 1, 1831. This day allows us to see how socialized medicine in Canada has evolved and how we must all fight for quality health care in a skeptical world.

Over the years, my patients have always been kind to my staff, my colleagues and I by acknowledging the hard work and challenges we have all undergone over the years. They express gratitude and reflect on the exceptional medical care and respect received while commiserating on the delays, the closed emergency rooms, the lack of family doctors, the medical misinformation, and the political machinations that underinvest in health care.

For Doctors' Day 2024, I wish to show my appreciation for my medical students, my colleagues and my patients.

Thank you, medical students, for being so hopeful about the future of medicine. It is a glorious profession that politicians and policymakers have no thoughtful plan to improve.

Thank you for learning this marvellous art and science that truly supports people despite your crushing debt. Thank you for advocating for your patients despite decades of being placated. Thank you for choosing the specialty in medicine that makes sense to you for your future because honestly, family medicine is difficult at this time.

I'm not sure if family medicine will survive, but I'm going to fight like heck to make sure it does.

Thank you, my colleagues, for going above and beyond despite political slurs of being “fat cats” not paying your fair share, and not working hard enough.

Thank you for finding ways to manage exceptional patient care in a hallway, a storeroom, when you cannot find a hospital job after 12 years of specialized medical training, when your office costs you more than you earn, when you sacrifice your family life, when you have to pay higher taxes on your lifetime pension savings.

I have faith in your integrity and fortitude to be true to the Hippocratic Oath.

Thanks to my patients for understanding the reasons for delays in getting tests, getting specialists, getting surgery, getting anything.

Thank you for seeing that doctors want you to have fast, efficient, quality care but the system, not your doctor, creates these inefficiencies. Thank you for acknowledging that the paperwork is killing us all and if we didn't have so much of it, we could see more patients.

Thank you for calling out hypocrisy that your health card pays for health care because little by little it is only your credit card that is being pulled out for cataracts, for sick notes, for blood tests not covered, for medications not covered, for vaccines that are not covered.

Thank you for fighting against wasted investments like corporate telehealth, corporate medicine reconciliation, and clinics not run by doctors that just refer or test.

Thank you for allowing your doctors to care for you with empathy and patience to the best of their ability in an underfunded, underappreciated, and poorly managed system. You deserve better and my colleagues and I will continue to fight for you.

Young doctors in training, colleagues, and all patients: We are the health care system, all of us, together. We can make it better once we convince politicians and policymakers to step out of the way.