Physician dissatisfaction and CMA incompetence.

The results of the biennial 2018 Survey of America’s Physicians, intended to “take the pulse” of doctors in the U.S., were recently released and tallied from responses of 8,774 physicians (along with 2,472 written comments). And the findings leave much to be desired. Here are some of their findings:  80% of physicians are working at full capacity or are overextended 62% are pessimistic about the future of medicine 55% describe their morale as somewhat/very negative, while 78% report sometimes/often or always experiencing burnout 23% of their time is spent on non-clinical paperwork (meaning unrelated to patient care) 49% would not recommend medicine as a career to their children Depressing as the above may be I have no doubt that physician morale in Canada is much worse and declining rapidly.   News release from Concerned Ontario Doctors  The Canadian Medical Association Abruptly Resigned  from the World Medical Association Why is Canada Alone?   October 10, 2018, (Toronto, ON) - On October 6, 2018, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) abruptly left the World Medical Association (WMA) Meeting being held in Iceland and resigned from the WMA.  In 1946, Canada was one of only ten counties to establish an Organizing Committee of international medical doctors, then founded the World Medical Association in 1947 with 29 countries. The World Medical Association developed the modernized Hippocratic Oath with the Declaration of Geneva in 1948 after the World War II atrocities and has since had the highest standard of International Code of Medical Ethics. Now in 2018, the WMA includes 114 countries and represents more than 10-Million physicians globally. Just days ago, the CMA abruptly resigned Canada from the WMA following absolutely no consultation with Canada’s physicians. The CMA is claiming that their sudden resignation from the WMA is about an “ethical” stand on “plagiarism”. But there is far more to this than meets the eye and this will impact all Canadians.       The CMA had been founded in 1867 (about 100 days after confederation) as a non-profit organization of physicians for physicians. However, the CMA’s resignation comes after nearly two years of physician membership resignations nationally from the voluntary organization as the CMA has increasingly acted against the best interests of Canada’s patients and frontline doctors. More recently, the CMA encouraged the legal loss of physicians’ conscience rights, unilaterally removed physicians from the CMA's mission and vision statements, secretly sold physicians’ MD Management financial firm (founded in 1957 by physicians for physicians and their families) to Scotia Bank for $2.6-Billion with absolutely zero consultation with CMA Council or CMA Membership, and is soon to implement an unethical Code of “Ethics”. On October 4, 2018, while at the WMA Meeting in Iceland, the CMA and the Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) had planned to put forth a motion for the WMA to be neutral on (i.e. not condemn) all physician assisted suicide and euthanasia of patients (i.e. unrestricted). The CMA and KNMG had withdrawn their motion due to lack of international support.     The CMA claimed it was withdrawing and walked out  because of because of a speech plagiarism by the newly elected chair of the organization - the speech  had been written  by a professional speech writer, the chair-elect admitted and apologized.  I think the CMA walked out because it was criticized for the disastrous job it has done in protecting the ethics of physicians in exercising their conscience, in refusing to be  party to killing and perhaps refusing to become part of the 'drug  pushing' community.  (When the president of the CMA cautioned regarding the dangers of wide spread marijuana use, she was forced to walk back her very real concerns!)      The $2.6 billion  sale of MD Management to Scotia Bank without consultation with the membership is appalling and surely requires further investigation.