The truth behind the Canadian mother demanding to see a white Doctor
After reading and seeing several articles and videos regarding this incident, I find it interesting that people are not talking about the real issue at hand and what made this woman so angry to begin with. In the beginning of the video, you can hear her saying that she has been waiting in the doctor's office for 4 hours with her son who is experiencing chest pain's. She then goes on to say that, when she was finally seen by a doctor he didn't speak English and had brown teeth. I think any Canadian parent would be frustrated. This is Canada, when we go to a doctor we expect to be treated in a timely manor by a professional. A doctor that doesn't speak English and has brown teeth is not what I think of as a professional Canadian physician.
According to the Canadian Institute for Health, Canadians report longer wait times for Doctors, specialists and emergency department visits than their peers in other countries and over the last 10 years this has become increasingly obvious. I have two young boys and as you may know from my previous blogs, I try my hardest to deal with ailments at home, however recently my youngest son was extremely sick and when I called to make an appointment with his doctor we were told that there was a 6 day wait. Of course, by the time the 6 days were up we had gone through the worst of it and no longer needed to see a doctor. After further investigation, I found that this is a nationwide concern with 1 in 5 Canadians reporting a wait time of 7+ days to see their family doctor. There is a serious problem at hand here and yes this woman's reaction was unsettling but this will be the first of many if the core root of the problem is not addressed. Canada is already experiencing a decline in physicians, in fact, Canada's physician-to-population ratio (age-adjusted) ranked 26th among 28 developed nations that maintain universal access health care. If you think its bad now, just wait. Over the next decade, the physician shortage will become much more severe.
Sources:
https://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/international-comparisons-en-web.pdf
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/canadas-doctor-shortage-will-only-worsen-coming-decade