Last year I wrote a few articles on our website to try and keep patients more informed of the medical politics in our province. I would call it a modest success, as it started some wonderful conversations and together with the handouts in our office generated a fair amount of feedback to our government.
Thank you, we really do appreciate that you care as much as we do and are willing to speak up.
The original issues I had thought to advocate have been somewhat dormant, waiting out COVID and probably the next election cycle. I haven't really needed to show the follies of the UCP administration, as they seem to be doing a great job of that on their own. In the interim, we changed Ministers of Health (I'll let you speculate as to why), and enough physicians have left Alberta that the impact is creeping closer to urban centres. I'll note that I've seen several Calgary clinics close or bear increased workload understaffed as well, but we have a greater buffer than the rural areas.
I have made an effort to reduce my social media presence, as I found there is a line beyond which the effort-to-reward ratio drops off sharply. Writing these articles in any depth means dwelling on social injustices, and that has a way of bleeding into life domains where righteous anger does not belong. I highly recommend everyone step back from social media at some point, it's liberating.
Quality control is another issue, as taking the time to be evidence based and yet interesting is incredibly labour-intensive. In future I'll strive for brevity when the subject allows, though I'll grant you medicine and politics are rarely clear-cut issues. COVID has unfortunately increased everyone's workload, and my general assumption has been that patients would rather I care for them first and blog second.
Lastly; I had a child. He's wonderful, and if you're in office I'll happily show you pictures if we have a spare moment (we will keep him off the internet for the time being). As you can imagine, work-life balance has abruptly shifted and I follow my own advice of keeping one's priorities straight.
With all that in mind, stay safe, get vaccinated, and I look forward to seeing you in office (the top half of your face anyway).