Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Why waste your time with the chickenpox, when you can solve chicken neck!


Canada’s medical profession is questioning the surge in practitioners forsaking general medicine and heading for the bountiful bucks of the cosmetic variety. It seems with the demand in cosmetic surgery; some doctors are splitting their time, giving mornings for the sick and afternoons for the enhancements. Others are just passing on the sick folks completely.

It’s a trend that has a few worried about the future of the Canadian medical system and others outright mad that doctors who were educated at public expense turning their backs on the care of the sick, for the land of vanity medicine.

The Botox exodus as its being called is resulting in a number of doctors choosing not to spend their days with those that are sick and in the greatest need.

As with anything in the medical debate money seems to set the agenda at times, a doctor could earn 60 dollars for providing a patient with a physical, or take 200 dollars to the bank for a ten minute Botox injection. You do the math and ponder the visuals… it’s not hard to see the path that some have decided on.

However, you have to wonder if perhaps it says more about our current craze for vanity enhancements than the state of medicine. Regardless it’s going to be an issue that the provinces will have to deal with and rather quickly, for it will lead to an even larger doctor shortage than we already face and in some communities the word crisis doesn’t do the situation justice.

It’s sure to become part of the continuous debate over the public/private model of medicine, but the numbers being bounced around probably show that more doctors will choose the relative joy of the cosmetic lines as opposed to the day to day drudgery of sniffles, wheezes and worse.

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