Shawn Whatley, Author at shawn whatley md

Is the OMA Distracted, Again?

OMA needs focus — What is the OMA’s focus?

Doctors love shiny objects. Many of us have ADHD or just old fashioned, ants-in-our-pants hyperactivity.

And doctors care deeply, not just about patients. Doctors pour passion into every shiny object that grabs us.

Social media survives on shiny objects. Media tells us what matters, and doctors are eager to show they care more than everyone else about it.

How the CMA Became Irrelevant

The Canadian Medical Association lost the war of distraction. It used to fight for doctors so that doctors could focus on patients.

The CMA seesawed for years between fighting for docs and pushing progressive politics. Progressives eventually won.

But they grew uncomfortable driving a bus built on profit from MD Management. How could they preach on social issues while owning the largest investment company in Canada, after the big banks?

So CMA sold MD for a few billion dollars. It no longer needs doctors or business or money. CMA can pursue progressive politics to its bleeding heart’s content, without concern for diversity or representation at all.

Fighting for doctors embarrasses the new CMA, for the most part.

How the OMA Can Become Irrelevant

The Ontario Medical Association faces the same battles as the CMA.

The OMA can fight for doctors so that doctors can focus on patients. Or it can throw members’ money at every popular crisis the media flashes in its eyes.

Small cliques of doctors have always rotated microphones to push pet issues in medical politics. Raised voices and red faces insist each New Issue is different. They have fought about everything from nuclear war to conflict in the Middle East, even perfume allergies and cats on planes. They expect everyone else to think and feel as they do.

Strat Plans Are So Boring

Why spend millions on a strategic plan if it is more fun to make one up at every board meeting?

The OMA has a very hard job. Representing doctors is not the hard part.

Several thousand important issues beg for attention. Each big issue has its own lobby group. The OMA needs strict discipline to stick to its own strategic plan and not promote other people’s plans.

Note, this is just in the narrow world of health policy and medical politics. Can the OMA stick to a few strategic issues where it can actually make a difference?

Lately, the OMA seems more interested in popular, non-health-policy issues. It would rather preach about popular politics than focus on helping doctors.

What difference is the OMA trying to make?

Which dial, exactly, is the OMA hoping to move?

How will it know when it has had an impact?

Aside from symbolic gestures aimed at emotional targets, could you please tell your members what you are trying to change and how you will show you changed it?

Resist Distraction

Distraction ranks as one of the biggest threats for any organization.

Peter Lynch coined the term diworsification, in his famous book, One Up on Wall Street. If you are a shoe company, build shoes not satellites. Stick to your knitting. Stay on strategy.

Regular working doctors beg you, OMA, please fight for us so we can focus on patients. Medical politics is not a popularity contest.

Gender Pay Gap: A Way to Fix It?

Women earn less than men.

The latest OMA study adds to studies that suggest the same thing. But the OMA data might also offer clues for how to fix the gender pay gap.

Can we find a solution before it festers and consumes the profession?

Gender Pay Gap

Some use this graph as forensic accounting. This mindset focusses on ways to assign blame and mete out punishment. It adds another gloomy finding to fuel burnout and depression.

Ample scope exists for debate about causes. This post is not about that. Instead, is there a way to focus on solutions that unify the profession? Does the data suggest a way to improve the gender pay gap?

Successful Women

If we look at the tails of the curves, it looks like both women and men make it to the top, or very close to it.

This points to two lines of investigation.

First, the graph suggests the absence of a structural barrier. The tails do not seem to end 16% apart.

Of course, maybe those women who land on the tail of the curve have to work 16% harder to get there. Maybe they have found a way to work 16% more hours to earn the same as men who work less? This should not be too hard to find out.

But more important, this tail points to a fascinating area of study.

Some women generate enormous income, over three times higher than average for all doctors.

What makes these uber-successful women so productive? Could these high-earning women teach the rest of us? Continue reading “Gender Pay Gap: A Way to Fix It?”

One Patient at a Time: Individualism in Medicine

Bedside medicine is individualistic on both sides of the bedrail. Doctors treat one patient at a time. Patients receive care in the same way.

Talk about teams applies to coordination and general working together. When you get to the bedside — doctor, nurse, RT, whatever — you are an individual treating another individual. Everything else disappears.

Mocking Stereotype

Sagging skin made her look even more shrunken than her 94 years. Oxygen tubing tangled with IV lines and ECG leads; restraints worthy of Lilliput.

She stared at her toes.

Her family stared at me, then her, then back to me. They cut vacation and carried Grandma home convinced she would die soon. They convinced me also.

We whispered a history and discussed death, dying, and advanced directives.

I turned to examine my tiny patient, scared I might break her porcelain frame.

“Excuse me,” I said, stethoscope in one hand reaching with my other for her shoulder. “I need to listen to your breathing…Could I bother you to move forward…just a little, so I can put my stethoscope…”

A fighter pilot never ejected as fast. Millimetres closer and her shoulder would have beaned me. Continue reading “One Patient at a Time: Individualism in Medicine”