Pie Palace

CBC’s Canadian doctors should face regular testing: medical school head is a great example of poor journalism. The gist of the article is simple: a doctor has recommended that Canadian doctors should be periodically recertified. The journalist has found another doctor else who says “No! doctors shouldn’t be retested.” Without talking to the journalist, we can’t tell if that was to create a sense of conflict, or to make the story more “balanced.”

There are three problems here:

1. The No doctor’s statement:
   

   What we do every day is not really a book learning thing, [...] To say, in fact, that because you pass an exam makes you a good physician every 10 years is absolutely wrong.

   is exactly refuted by the CMAJ editorial:
   

   In Quebec, investigators found that family physicians’ scores on their certification examination and Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination were related to provision of quality care after 4–7 years in practice. More recently, Holmboe and colleagues found that physicians’ scores on the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Maintenance of Certification examination was associated with higher rates of performance in care for Medicare patients.

   which goes on to cite the studies in question.
2. The Yes doctor, Wendy Levinson has qualifications as a medical instructor, and appears to study how patients interact with their doctors and is a chair at department of medicine.
3. Meanwhile, the No doctor, Howard Conter does not appear to have any any relevant publications or appointments.

News stories like this are important. They get people to think about how healthcare is delivered in Canada, and how that can be reformed. It’s a pity that the story took the form of “she said, he said” instead of dipping into the empirical studies behind the editorial.