Health

As a newcomer, we have been facing many problems. One of them in healthcare when we needed to find a family doctor. Why do we need a family doctor? A family doctor will record our history of health and they also order laboratory tests. If we need to see a specialist doctor, usually, we need to get a referral from our family doctor. In my experience, that was very difficult to find a family doctor because many doctors didn't accept new patients. Even if they accept new patients, they also need to pass the interview so that the doctor can make a decision about whether to accept new patients or not. Moreover, we can’t make an appointment at a convenient time on the same day or next day. That means that it takes a very long time, maybe one week or two weeks to get an appointment, even when we are not feeling well. Currently, we need three weeks to make an appointment for my son who has skin problems.

After these experiences, I miss the healthcare system in my homeland which ran on a dual-track basis including two sections one was public and the other one was private. Mostly, public facilities were usually overburdened with a lengthy waiting list and waiting time for services the same as in Canada. However, we went to private facilities which had general doctors, specialist doctors and hospitals. We really understood that we had to pay more for private systems instead of public healthcare but it provided personalized choices and more accessible services to patients who were willing and could afford to pay for private healthcare services. We chose doctors directly whom we trusted and participated in decision making when we got hospitalized or went through surgery.

I think private medical institutions are particularly attractive for patients. We can buy personal insurance including private health insurance and it let us have another choice to make use of private healthcare services.

Anyway, today we live in Canada so we must follow the rule of healthcare. By the way, I want to share my past experience when my son had a minor cut in school. The teacher told us about using Urgent Care Centre instead of a hospital emergency room. That was the first time we found out about an urgent care system. Urgent Care Centres provide services for illnesses and injuries. They tend to have shorter wait times. It is a good service for my family when we cannot wait for an appointment with my family doctor or we need urgent care but not in an emergency. I appreciated finding a good way to solve the problem.