Healthcare in Canada - like education, highways, and social services – is all about (capital “P”) Politics. If you don’t believe this, take a moment to consider the political run of four healthcare people in the recent British Columbia election. Two doctors, a nurse/lawyer, and a health care administrator ran as BC Liberal candidates in the provincial election this month. Three succeeded in winning a seat in the hallowed halls of Victoria.
I’m most familiar with the two doctors who ran. Margaret MacDiarmid, a general practitioner and former President of the BC Medical Association, won in Vancouver-Fairview. Following her stint at the BCMA, Margaret came to realize that working with the bigger picture had a greater chance of improving the health status of the communities she worked in, than working 10 hour days seeing patients. She came to understand the imperfect relationship that exists between doctors, patients, and the health system, and saw a way to create improvements. She’ll tackle each issue with her diplomacy, intellect, and listening skills.
Moira Stilwell, a nuclear medicine specialists (radiology), is the head of the department of nuclear medicine at three Lower Mainland hospitals and also has a public hospital practice, and won her seat in Vancouver-Langara. She’s been part of the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation Board for many years, and has also worked on a screening mammography strategy to increase the screening rates in the public system. She looked at the issues from a systems and strategy perspective, and didn’t stop when it was suggested that they just tell women to go….she worked to find the influencers in the process, and then developed literature for these, the family doctors, to refer patients on their first visit after their 40th birthday. She too believes that she can create a bigger impact upon the population by working in policy, than she can in diagnosing and treating individual cancer patients.
These are two outstanding women, and the province is fortunate to have politicians of this caliber in the Legislature. Both women will take a pay cut to enter Politics, and will leave behind the patients for which they were trained to care. To have such insight into the ways they can use their talents to improve the health status of a larger population for the “greater good,” takes a bold character and intellect.
I predict that these two will take Victoria by storm, and help to bring a capital “H” to Healthcare in Politics.
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