A Grumpy Gal from the East Coast

I found myself at a walk-in clinic at our local hospital this past week and - wow - was that an interesting experience! I'm tempted to rant for a bit about how inefficient the registration process was, or how frustrating it was to wait for nearly 5 hours when there were only 8 people ahead of me in line. Seriously? But that wasn't the most interesting part of my visit to the clinic. The most interesting part was the conversation amongst the 25 or so people in the waiting room that day. I should probably set the stage by noting that I live in a small Nova Scotia town, where there's a severe shortage of family docs. Most of the people waiting had family doctors until recently, but then their docs got sick or retired or moved away and they weren't able to find new ones to take them on. Needless to say, the long wait fostered a good deal of discussion about the challenges facing our health care system, and about past and present unsuccessful attempts to address them. ...