..."Only Private Enterprise Can Save Canada's Health Care System
Tommy Douglas, the CBC’s Greatest Canadian, brought us universal health care. But even his plan didn’t originally pay for everybody’s ingrown toenails. His primary goal was to make sure nobody faced financial ruin if they got sick.
Today we have a system where controlling costs is more important than treating patients, and where ideology is crippling us. In some places, including Toronto, people go blind waiting for cataract surgery. The government could restore their sight tomorrow simply by sending them to a private clinic instead of to a hospital. The cost to the government would be exactly the same. But in Canada, private is a dirty word, and so the government would rather you go blind. Poor Tommy would be spinning in his grave." ...
Comment Copy and Pasted from "All About Nursing Blog" from 2004 discussion
..."Nursing Sucks In Toronto, Canada too! As a new RN working in Ontario Canada, I can tell you that they eat their own here as well. I've been slapped on the butt, cussed at, yelled at, gossiped and ratted on, etc. Nothing is ever good enough for them. If you are new get ready for a turf war on your hands. They are suffering anal retentive narcissistic obsessive compulsive personality disorders. Its not easy at all, being a male nurse. I've had no problems with the doctors, the aides, etc. But as for the nurses, its often been the threshold of hell. And by the way, some of them are as sweet as pie to their patients, but when it comes to you the new nurse, prepare for the beast to open its mouth and show its teeth! Its a Jekyll and Hyde penomenon.
The union is impotent, and the hospital is always overbudget and cutting back. Yes there is a shortage, yes nurses are doing non-nursing tasks, etc. etc. etc. BUT, there's one important factor of all: nurses have become their own worst enemy.
If there are any Americans reading this I'll tell you what few Canadians will admit to you: if you paid the taxes we pay you'd be aphalled. And yes, the government always finds new taxes and ways to misappropriate our money. Waiting times in ERs can last for hours, MRIs are on 3 month waiting lists, hospitals have quotas on how many patients with certain illnessess they'll treat because they can't afford to treat more, ambulances were turned away at ERs because they couldn't/wouldn't take more patients until a 17 year old patient with acute asthma died in the ambulance, and eventually after incidents like that the paramedics got fed up and said, "we're dropping them off at your ER whether you like it or not!" The further north you go there are communities with no access to a family practitioner, (never mind that we have doctors from other countries driving taxis and mopping floors because Canada in its wisdom feels they are not qualified), the list goes on and on!
So the question is: what are we going to do about it? Leave the job, hire an attorney, and tell anyone who will listen the crap that goes on because in the end not only do we get screwed, so do the patients and the next patient nedding the system could be your own dear mother. SCARY THOUGHT! "...
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