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MAKE
RATE MDs WORK FOR YOU
Regarding your article "Doc's
RateMDs battle turns ugly" (May 15, Vol 4, No 9,
p 14), doctors should realize RateMDs isn't going away.
Let's embrace the idea. Rather than trying to sabotage
the site by making fake posts, etc, why not look at
RateMDs as an opportunity? It gives us access to a valuable
resource — our patients' opinions. As physicians,
our aim is to provide excellent service to our patients;
they get to judge our success. It's rewarding to read
glowing reviews about our practices. But when patients
are unhappy, that's a golden opportunity to make changes
so the next patient is more satisfied. Let's ask our
patients for suggestions on how to change our practices,
and challenge them to give specific improvement ideas.
Save yourself the work of coming up with solutions.
None of this will do away with
libellous comments, but it will separate the flaming
ranters from those leaving credible, constructive posts.
Beyond that, we'll have to trust our patients to make
their own decisions.
I'm trying an experiment to see
if this will work. Check out my listing on RateMDs (under
Saskatchewan physicians). If you want to try the same
thing, feel free to copy and/or modify my posting from
April 17, 2007 to suit yourself.
Dr Kishore Visvanathan,
Saskatoon, SK
Editors' note: Check out
"Advance access scheduling made easy" on page 10 of
this issue for another of Dr Visvanathan's experiments.
MYTHIC
DIAPERS
I read your article "Gambling:
governments' dangerous addiction" (May 15, 2007,
Vol 4, No 9, p 26) with great interest. It's a fact
that some patrons do wear adult diapers when playing
video lottery terminals (VLTs) because they believe
the machine will pay out to someone else if they leave
to go to the washroom. Until these myths are quashed,
some patrons who have problem gambling issues will continue
to wear diapers, or even urinate in coin cups, to avoid
leaving the machine for even a moment.
Phillip J Boucher,
Consultant in Electronic
Gaming Machine Addiction, Sudbury, ON
NO
SEX, PLEASE, WE'RE MDs
Here's what some of your colleagues had to say about
our May 15 poll question "With
the Canadian physician shortage dire as ever, should
punishments be relaxed for doctors' sexual slip ups?"
(see page 17 for full poll results and this issue's
questions):
- We should relax reprimands on
minor issues. Sexual impropriety or dangerous actions
should still be viewed severely.
- Some of the rules about dating
patients should be reviewed as it's hard to attract
single young MDs to rural areas if every resident
is off- limits as far as dating is concerned!
- Read the Hippocratic oath —
yearly, at least. "Why does man not choose the virtuous
path?"— The Koran
- If you have no self-control
and discipline you have no business in medicine.
- Are you nuts?
CLARIFICATION
In the article "The
doc who would be cricketer" (May 30, Vol 4, No 10,
page 35) about Dr Nat Shah's passion for cricket it's
stated that Dr Shah is a surgeon in Cornwall, ON. He
is in fact a general practitioner.
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