Included with my Canadian Medical Association Journal this month was a separate page with the title "Adult Obesity Recommendations 2015" devised by the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care. It was a particularly fatuous document, not that its recommendations were invalid but rather they were behind what generally known and often practiced in the 70s and were considerably more lukewarm in their suggestions than what we were practicing in the Department of Family Medicine Behavior Modification Weight Loss Clinic at University Hospital in Saskatoon in those years. The administridiots (mostly not physicians I am pleased to say) who decided such things decided that the modest (very modest) budget I submitted was worthy only of the B-budget, which meant that it had as much chance of being granted as a snowball in hell. (Unfortunately it did not have the chances of a snow-ball in Saskatchewan.) So, a dedicated few nurses, doctors, dieticians and physios committed their Monday nights for the best part of a year for no recompense whatsoever. We hoped that University hospital and the Medical College might view an "up and running" program more positively. It is ironic that all the grant money went to the more 'glamorous' programs, because preventing something is not news no matter how inexpensive, while a single dramatic exploit was worth a fortune.
After a year or so, those dedicated souls who kept this clinic going got a little fed up contributing their Monday nights 'for free' and when the hospital budget scheduled us in the 'B' category once again the following year, they very reasonably opted out and the Weight Clinic closed down.
So now, forty years later, a Canadian Task Force paper has distributed guidelines recommending measures that we were practicing in the seventies!
I wonder how much that cost in both time and money! No wonder the Health Care System is broke!
If enough folks are interested in pursuing the actual content of the guidelines, let me know.
Mainly events that occur in and around the medical world. Some you need to know about and some you don't. All to either inform or amuse you.
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