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Concerns Regarding the Proposed Bylaw Amendments from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC and BC Ministry of Health
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Dear colleague,
In light of the worrisome and precedent-setting amendments to physician licensure (Section 2-24 and Schedule A) proposed by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC and BC Ministry of Health, please find an informative response letter attached below. The letter was jointly created by BC physicians to voice our concerns and we urge you to share it with other BC physicians. We have but a very limited window of opportunity to make our concerns known as the April 15 deadine for input is imminent.
We will be submitting the attached letter as feedback to the College and Ministry of Health with the names of all concerned physicians who are willing to have their names included in support of the letter (listed alphabetically). If you would like your name included in the group letter, please submit your name to the form at https://forms.gle/9BA2RBbq7dVVuYuQA by 6pm PST on Tuesday, April 14, 2020. The names will be compiled and the group letter submitted Tuesday evening.
Alternately, if you share these concerns and prefer to submit your feedback individually, we welcome you to use the attached letter - completely or partially. Please note that any feedback to the College and Ministry of Health [Dr. Heidi Oetter (bylaw3@cpsbc.ca) and Mr. Brian Westgate (proregadmin@gov.bc.ca)] must be received by Wednesday, April 15, 2020.
Thank you for helping to uphold the integrity of physician practice in BC and keeping our patients, communities, and families safe.
Sincerely,
Caroline Wang, MD, MPA
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| 2020-04_CPSBC_Bylaw_Amendments_Response_Letter_FINAL.pdf | 646.18 KB |
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College EdictsPublic
For a few years I used to attend the College of Physicians and Surgeons AGMs in September. Then they started calling them ‘education days’ and the AGM was confined to 15 minutes at the end of the day, with the briefest of reporting of the usual expected topics (finances and other reports) and effectively no New or Old business items.
I used to attend because I was under the foolish misapprehension that it was my responsibility as a ‘society’ member to do so. I wasn’t aware that the College actually didn’t want any form of comment or questions from its members.
So let’s dispel the myth that the profession of medicine in British Columbia is self-governing. It isn’t. The members of our profession have no effective voice. We are never consulted but are invariably informed by edict.
The concept of professional self-government arose from the recognition that only those who had actually practised could truly understand the demands, constraints and obligations inherent within its exercise. Those members who would become governors of a profession would not only be expected to have personal experience within it, but would also be recognised by their peers as being of exemplary character and judgement. To which end they would be elected from within the profession wherein they had gained such recognition from their peers.
This certainly hasn’t happened within my practising lifetime. Instead the medical profession is regulated. For the most part regulation does not involve any form of input from physicians. Neither is it necessarily informed by testable evidence. The regulation of the medical profession is essentially political, and inevitably influenced by socio-political trends of the day.
The greatest threat to the practise of medicine is the imposition of rules by sanctimonious, self-opinionated individuals who insist on viewing it though their own personal and narrow lens. It’s worse when they glibly pretend that they have the sole reasonable perspective as to what is in the best interests of our patients.
Chris.