It is our responsibility in Health care and government to do better! It is our responsibility to understand the needs and rights of those we care for and represent.

It’s a really tough time right now. Our leadership is struggling to stop a virus and the general public is fighting for their human and civil rights; While at the same time scared, to no end, from media and other fear-mongering outlets! Both sides are frustrated.

It is true that covid numbers are increasing and the sick ones are taking up hospital beds; at a rate that is frightful to medicine. At the same time, the collateral damage of the pandemic is increasing at similarly alarming rates, all the while vaccination role-out has been a blunder.

There needs to be accountability. Not only accountability for poorly managing this pandemic but also for the lack of transparency in leadership that has lead to the absolute breakdown of trust at all levels.

TRUST is the cornerstone of our social contract. The implied rights we give elected officials in exchange for some of our freedom.  What happens when the social contract is broken? We end up where we are today.

Unless TRUST can be rebuilt with the public, we will be stuck here, and doomed to repeat this process with every crisis we face.  

So who’s responsible for rebuilding this trust? I’d love to say it’s the public’s duty but it’s not! It’s the public’s duty to follow the rules to the best of their ability, so long as those rules don’t grossly violate their civil rights.

The true responsibility rests on the shoulders of Health Care and the Government. It is the government we elected to represent us, and the health care professional who chose to put the public’s interest before their own. No matter how fatigued!

Medicine stands on 4 ethical pillars. Autonomy- the right to self determination;  Non maleficence – the duty to do no harm;  Beneficence – the duty to do good Justice – the duty to equality in health care.

To Medicine: always consider these pillars! They must only be compromised under dire circumstances, after all perspectives are counted and all risk/benefit ratios are considered.

To the Government: Spend actual time learning the needs of those you represent! Do not take our social contract for granted; It is always a crisis away from falling apart!

Ira Price MD, FRCPC

 Just trying to be a good human . . .