Article contentMinutes later I was out again. No, the spot on my left calf didn’t look like the benign skin cancer I’d had burned off nearly two years ago was back. But yes, the photo of the spot I’d taken on my cellphone two months earlier did look different than the spot looked now. Yes, he could send me on to the dermatologist who’d removed it. I’d taken a photo of her and her contact information. He copied down the information.Article contentAnd that weird bit of hard tissue in the fleshy part of my left big toe.Article content“Wart,” he said after a quick look and a prod with a glove-covered hand.Article content“Call my secretary in the morning and she’ll put you on the list to have it burned off with liquid nitrogen. It may be a few months.”Article contentHe turned to a file on top of the pile on his desk. I took that as my sign to leave.Article contentArticle contentMcDonald’s delivery of healthArticle contentArticle contentIt was the McDonald’s version of health care. Quick, efficient, impersonal. He didn’t know me. I didn’t know him. And there were 18 people waiting behind me.Article contentArticle contentThe math was simple. Spent just six minutes with each of 30 patients and you’re looking at three hours of clinic time. Start at 6 p.m. and you’re lucky if you’re done by 9 p.m. And that doesn’t count who knows how much paperwork time created by that one night of work.Article contentThat sounds disturbingly like what the P.E.I. government had in mind when it blundered into a fight with its doctors recently.Article contentStruggling to try to ease the lack of family doctors plaguing the province – just as it is bedevilling every province and territory in the country – the government shoved its foot firmly in its mouth by telling doctors they’d have to maintain a practice with 1,600 patients and see 24 patients a day. Time per patient, 15 minutes.Article contentThe result was entirely predictable. Anger.Article content“This is not possible to do, what they’re asking,” Summerside family physician Dr. David Antle told a reporter. “People, including me, are already teetering on burnout and this will send us over the edge.”Article contentArticle contentAnd he was describing a practice of 900 patients with about 20 of them seeing him each day. Oh, and then there are the mandatory shifts in the emergency room and the reviews of tests and …. on and on.Article contentArticle contentPath to overcrowded clinicsArticle contentArticle contentThe province backed away from the controversy in a hurry, saying the “minimum” was really the “maximum.” That’s quite a difference.Article contentThere is no easy answer to dealing with the not-enough-family-doctors mess. If there was, one province or another would have found it by now. But suggesting doctors do more sounds like a sure path to the same overcrowded clinic I jammed into a few weeks ago.Article contentOh, and the dermatologist confirmed the original opinion. The cancer is not back. The tingling is nerves regenerating from her removal treatment and the scar tissue changes colour during the day. All normal.Article contentAnd the wart? Nope, she said, horrified at the idea of a liquid nitrogen treatment.Article content“Softer shoes and it’ll heal in a few months,” she said of the big toe as she massaged it with an ungloved hand. She smiled at me looking at her bare hand.Article content“You don’t have a wart, so nothing to worry about.”Article contentArticle contentArticle contentArticle contentRick MacLean is retired as an instructor in the journalism program at Holland College. He lives in New Brunswick.Article content
RICK MacLEAN: Hurry up, the doctor is on the clock
