Is the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) irrelevant?
Last week I went to the CMA annual meeting in Ottawa. As admission was “free” to members observing the event, I thought I’d take a peek and see what was going on.
I have been told that the CMA has actually made dramatic changes in the last few years, and that Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti has been working very hard behind the scenes to make the organization more relevant. So, to the past three presidents of the CMA especially, I understand congratulations are in order.
There’s a big HOWEVER coming, I’m afraid.
I left the CMA meeting feeling frustrated by an agenda that seems stuck in the 1980s.
When you look at who attends the CMA meetings and who holds voting positions, the demographic is overwhelmingly the older white male. In a time when men and women are admitted to medical school at a 4:6 ratio, only 30% of the attendees at the meeting were female. Part of that is a reflection of the historic gender imbalance in the profession and another part may be that women are not as interested in the organization as men.
I do not have the breakdown of attendees by age, but by my visual assessment indicated that the older crowd definitely held the balance of power. Doctors who are retired can hold office for the CMA and they may well be the ones who have the most time to offer the CMA, but do they represent my values? I once saw an election sign that read: “Your parents and their friends are voting—are you?” I’ve used that slogan to great effect with many young people.
So, if the older (generally Caucasian) males are more than doing their part at the CMA, who is missing from the table? The answer is obvious: young doctors, especially women. This may be where the disconnect came when I looked at the agenda.
Examples of resolutions passed at the 2014 CMA meeting that would have been ground-breaking in the 1980s but seem rather sedate in 2014:
• The CMA calls for accessible, comprehensive and high-quality care for transgender patients.
• The Canadian Medical Association supports the need to educate physicians about the prevalence of child abuse.
I appreciate that these items might have been missed in the past and that it is important to make sure they are eventually addressed but come on! Let’s show some collective guts and put up some ballsy resolutions. Off the top of my head:
• The Canadian Medical Association asks the Conservative federal government to refrain from appealing the Supreme Court decision condemning the cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program.
• The Canadian Medical Association calls for meaningful programming to close the discrepancy in life expectation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians.
Maybe I need a lesson in why Canada’s doctors can’t be fierce champions for the health of our patients and I need to adjust my expectations of the role of the CMA.
Or perhaps, Canadian doctors are on the verge of becoming a relevant group that wields its power for great social change but needs a few more voices in order to be heard.
Fellow CMA members, which one is it?
Dr. Sarah Giles is a locum family physician who is currently between assignments with Médecins Sans Frontières.
Online edited comment to the above article by John Philpott, President and CEO, CanAm Physician Recruiting Inc. – Posted August 28, 2014
Finally, its nice to see an enlightened Canadian MD speak out about the influence of the old boys’ clubs in the Canadian Health System. We rarely see that occur! Sarah if you think CMA is off side, take a look at MCC, FMRAC and the provincial Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons.
Why do Canadian physicians tolerate and allow a College Registrar to remain for decades in the most powerful position that controls the licencing of physicians, and their fate should a complaint arise? The average age of Registrars in Canada is probably close to 70. These are old school physicians, many who no longer even qualify to practice medicine because they have been out of practice for so long. But yet they apparently have full comprehension of the current medical practice environment. Brings to question why do we have 10 provincial medical licencing colleges in Canada, with a population less than the state of California, where there is only 1 licencing board?
Sarah it is and always will be about “power”, – and the younger generation of Canadian physicians continue to ignore it at their peril!
