It's time for family-friendly medicine

My sisters and I, aged 17, 16 and 12, were just back from a two-month camping trip to western Canada. We'd driven 23 hours to arrive back home in Montreal at 3am. We opened the door, giddy and ready to surprise our parents as they slept, and there was my neonatologist dad, fully dressed with that expression people get when their beeper wakes them up in the dark. A quick hug and he was out the door: a 28-week preemie was in distress.

The need for our dad to run off and save babies was never something we questioned, and we certainly grew to appreciate his expertise as we had children of our own ("Dad, I just gave the baby 500mg of ampicillin instead of 50 � what do I do?").

All parents face the challenge of 'getting their priorities straight.' But for those involved in medicine things are pretty black and white. Some things can wait, others can't. And anything that happens in a hospital most likely can't. Even a child understands that. But why do emergencies always happen at the best part of the story?

Amongst each other, doctors have always tried to minimize the worst absences: docs with young children are never on-call Christmas morning. But maybe that's not enough anymore. These days parents and kids expect more from their years together � we all know just how important those first few years are to our relationships.

Maybe it's time for health HR planners to tune in to those little voices. The prerogative to save lives may prevent them from taking their doctor parents' absences personally, but they will still remember.

� Susan Usher