Have 'scope, will travel

I am a Canadian physician who has been working around the world (Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Australia, Saipan, Oman) for the last 11 years. When I stumbled across your article “One country, one medical licence!”¹ a very loud bell rang.

When I was on faculty at the University of Western Ontario I used to offer senior residents in gastroenterology a summer locum in my practice at the end of their training. My secretary would book them solid (just like I was booked) and they could take home everything they earned. It cost them nothing but a small gift for my secretary, whose salary I continued to pay. It meant they had a little money to start out with, and for me it was invaluable — I could take a relaxing holiday and know that when I returned everything would be as I had left it, or even better. Some even left detailed notes on what they would like me to do with patients they had seen.

When I return to Canada I would like to return the favour to these former residents of mine. In fact, there are many other harried GI doctors I would like to offer my services to: “Take a holiday! Leave on a Friday, return on a Monday and everything will be the same as you left it. In fact I'll even pay your secretary's salary.” But the doctors I helped to train are now scattered across Canada, as are my GI colleagues. To do what I would like to do would mean getting a medical licence from almost every province.

When we graduated from medical school we all wrote the nationwide LMCC exams. When we finished our residency training we all took the nationwide Royal College exams. When we started our practices we all joined the nationwide Canadian Medical Protective Association. Most of us are members of the nationwide CMA.

Canada has become too small a country not to have a nationwide medical licence and a nationwide medicare billing system. Are our provincial medical associations bold enough to implement the former and are our provincial and federal politicians brave enough to implement the latter? I fear they are not, but I live in hope.

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Stephen N. Sullivan
Peripatetic Proctologist Muscat, Oman