Not long ago, it took me 3 weeks to get my son an appointment to see a doctor. 3 weeks?! I was shocked. They told me that I can come to the walk in clinic instead. Walk in clinics should be for those who don’t have a doctor, not because I need someone to check my son’s itchy skin! Besides, I don’t have up to 4 hours to wait at a walk in clinic with my 4 year old. Plus I’d have to bring my 2 year old at the same time. And I just don’t have 4 extra hours in the day. So what did I do? I booked the appointment and then self diagnosed my son and went to the pharmacy to pick up some cream. 3 weeks later, I saw my doctor who prescribed the same thing I diagnosed him as having!
From that experience, I went to find a new doctor. Where the new doctor assured me that I won’t have to wait 3 weeks to book in my son… OR 6 months to get a physical. It wasn’t easy finding the doctor. After searching online and making a million or so calls, I actually found one through word of mouth.
It’s SO frustrating, especially those who are sick, to get in to just see a doctor. So now what? I went to our sister station 660 News to see if anyone there knew anything about what’s going on with our medical world. I came across my colleague Craig Lester. Craig informed me that he’s been working on a 5 part series that talks about just this. I will post his series here so you can follow along. Some VERY interesting information in it!
“the problem with the shortage starts with the number of family doctors being trained in the country.” Read the story here!