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.

The great thing about a liquid lunch is it gives you a good reason to leave the bike at home and take a taxi. Earlier this week, while returning from just such a junket, I started talking with the cabbie about the City’s proposal for putting cameras in taxis.

The guy was emphatic. The cameras were a terrible idea, for a number of reasons:

1. The cameras don’t just take the occasional picture, the track the taxi’s speed, time on shift, and money made from fares.
   
2. The cameras must be installed by a city-approved umm… installer. Apparently there are only two, leading the drivers to think that there’s a little patronage action going on behind the scenes.
   
3. Drivers think that their fares may be put off by the invasion of privacy. The example the driver gave was of someone cheating on their spouse. He felt he’d lose business if they knew there was a camera taking their picture.
   
4. A camera wouldn’t stop a crime from happening, it would only make it easier for the cops to track down the perp. The driver didn’t seem interested in justice-for/vengeance-on/rehabilitation-of criminals as much as preventing the crime in the first place. He was in favour of a barrier, but said the city dismissed the idea because it would make Ottawa look dangerous.
   
5. The proposed cameras sounded over-priced. He thought the city was going to be selling them to cabbies at a premium.

It’s interesting that the media (embodied by CBC and the parts of the Citizen that I read) hasn’t really talked about the alleged capabilities of these cameras. If safety is the first concern of the city, then it sounds like they should opt for barriers, and then put cameras in (you know, the kind the only take pictures) if the cabbies want them.

Folks on CFRA were saying that it sounds like City staff would have access to the cameras, leading to the possibility that the cameras could be used for purposes other than ensuring cabbie’s safety.

So CBC doesn’t have the spine to stand up to the Chinese government by airing an unedited documentary on the Falun Gong. But the do have the guts to report on their own editorial lapse (then again, the story is just an AP wire story, so maybe their feed-reader published it without human intervention).

Now they say they’re airing a modified version of the documentary. I’d be interested in seeing a comparison of the before and after.