11 Nov. Lest we Forget
A well trained Spin off from the military! Exists here in Canada yet only Manitoba currently utilises it. The majority of provinces are always complaining about the LACK of Doctors in their hospitals.
I received this letter from a Blog reader which is self explanatory, tell your MP your MLA about it. This would certainly alleviate the problem PLUS use the Knowledge these men and women Medics have obtained in their Military Service. Please read on.......The Motto of the CFMS is Militi Succurrimus [We hasten to aid the soldiers]
The Chronicle Herald Library P.O. Box 610 Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada B3J 2T2 Ph. 902-426-3384; 902-426-3080 Fax. 902-426-2810 Story id: 497162 Category: Front Rating: 9 Date: 2006-04-15 STORY Version: 1
Not-quite doctors could be tonic for health-care system Physician assistants do the basics while doctors focus on specialties By JOHN GILLIS Health Reporter When you go to the dentist, the first person who sees you is a dental hygienist, who does the cleaning and other routine things. The dentist moves from chair to chair, doing the more specialized tasks he's trained for. Why can't doctors do that? They do in the United States, with the aid of physician assistants. And a growing number of specialists in Nova Scotia believe that's the best solution to deal with doctor shortages and growing wait lists that threaten to cripple the health system. We have to look at other models of how we're going to deliver the care, says Dr. Michael Dunbar, a Halifax orthopedic surgeon. There's no choice. I'm desperate to have physician assistants - I'd love to have them. Recently, the head of the short-staffed division of gastroenterology in the Capital district health authority said physician assistants could help relieve an unmanageable workload that's hampering colon cancer screening by doing procedures like endoscopies that doctors don't really need to be performing. There are about 60,000 physician assistants in the U.S. and 130 in the Canadian Forces. Sometimes called physician extenders, they can literally act as another pair of hands for a doctor and handle many of the routine consultations that don't require a specialist's expertise. Physician assistants typically have a background in nursing, physiotherapy or another health profession before entering a two-year postgraduate training program followed by on-the-job training with a doctor. A fully trained physician assistant can do most of the same tasks as a doctor, under a physician's supervision. In the last half of 2005, only 16 per cent of people in the Capital district who had hip replacements and eight per cent who had knee replacements had surgery within the 90-day benchmark deemed medically acceptable. Dr. Dunbar said with a physician assistant he could run two operating rooms at once and double productivity. The physician assistant would open (the incision site) for me and do the routine things you don't need a highly qualified surgeon to do and then I'd walk in and do the technical part and make sure it was adequate and then the physician assistant would close, he said. It's a way of getting more done with limited specialists. Dr. Dunbar was in Ottawa this week on behalf of the Canadian Orthopedics Association to meet with the Canadian Medical Association ahead of a national push to have governments incorporate physician assistants into the health system. Only Manitoba lets physician assistants practise with civilian doctors. The handful working in that province have had a big impact, Chris Rhule, discipline director of physician assistants for the Winnipeg regional health authority, said in an interview. Mr. Rhule works with a cardiovascular surgeon. At the same time the surgeon is opening the chest and doing the work up there, we would be down harvesting the veins in the legs or arteries in the arms to use as conduits, he said. And once that's done, we would move up top to help with the surgery itself. Manitoba has also set up Canada's first physician assistant training program. You can train four or five (physician assistants) in the time it takes to train a physician, Mr. Rhule said. Women referred to plastic surgeon Dr. Leif Sigurdson at Halifax's Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre for breast reconstruction following mastectomies are now being booked for surgery in the summer of 2008. Dr. Sigurdson, who worked with a physician assistant during a fellowship in Atlanta, just completed a master of business administration degree at Saint Mary's University during which he examined the business case for physician assistants. We could do things much better here, he said Wednesday. Dr. Sigurdson said in an average 10-hour day set aside for operating, he only spends about six hours in the operating room and the rest of the time waiting for patients to be moved, the room to be cleaned and so on. But much of what he does in the operating room could easily be done by a trained physician assistant. He said it doesn't require a surgeon to prepare and drape a patient for surgery, sew up an incision or dress a wound. A (physician assistant) could sew up just as good as I can, Dr. Sigurdson said. In fact, by his calculations, a surgeon is needed for only about 37 per cent of what happens during an operation. And a physician assistant could handle 51 per cent of the patients he now sees in a clinic. About 100 patients were booked to see Dr. Sigurdson on Thursday morning. He needs to see patients having or recovering from major procedures like breast reconstruction. But when the appointment is simply to check whether someone who's had a minor procedure is faring well, a physician assistant would do just as well. Comparing the cost of hiring a physician assistant at about $70,000 per year to a conservative estimate of Dr. Sigurdson's increased productivity, he estimated the province would see a modest cost saving over 10 years. But when he compared the cost of a physician assistant plus the space and staff to run two operating rooms at once to simply hiring a second surgeon to work in a second room, he found the province could save $1 million in today's dollars. A full-time surgeon at the QEII is paid an average $432,521 a year under a contract with the province, meaning the doctor would get no extra pay for doing twice as much surgery. I'm a young surgeon; I like operating, Dr. Sigurdson said. And I'd like to operate more. You don't train 14 years to do something and then you only get to do it a day or a day and a half a week. It's frustrating. He said it's much too late now to hope that increasing the number of doctors trained in Canada can meet the mushrooming demand for care. The country is just now experiencing the leading edge of a huge group of aging baby boomers who will not accept years-long waits for health care. To take business concepts and bring them into the public system is a strategy that we really should be thinking very strongly about before we throw the baby out with the bathwater and bring in a parallel private-care system, Dr. Sigurdson said. Physician assistants work well in the private American system and could easily be incorporated into the public system, he said. And there are trained physician assistants in Nova Scotia eager to work, he said. Those employed by the military frequently take early retirement and are left with few work options save providing care on oil rigs. Introducing physician extenders to Nova Scotia would require legislation. Earlier this month, a Health Department spokeswoman said the idea is on the radar screen but the province hasn't yet taken any steps toward creating such a law. Dr. Dunbar said wait-time guarantees promised by the Conservative government will not be attainable with existing resources. Sending patients out of province for treatment or creating a parallel private system are the most often discussed solutions. Soon we're going to be forced into getting more patients done and (adding physician assistants) is an obvious, easy, low-hanging-fruit solution to doing that, he said. ( jgillis@herald.ca)
Our Medics are Professional and Dedicated Service Personnell let's use their expertise in the Civilian Sector as well.
Nil Sine Labore
Robby
