Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail (Toronto), February 3, 2009
When Andrea and Ginette Markowski, a same-sex couple, went doctor shopping last month, they got a rude surprise. The doctor they approached confessed she was uncomfortable with lesbians—so uncomfortable she advised them to look elsewhere.
The doctor, Kamelia Elias, who works in a Winnipeg clinic, has practised in Canada for five years. She received her medical training in Egypt, and her religion condemns homosexuality. Lesbians “get a lot of diseases and infections,” she told the local paper, incorrectly. “I said it’s better to find someone who will take this type of patient.” But the couple was furious. “She clearly was shocked by our relationship, unable to recover,” said Andrea Markowski.
Dr. Elias is just one of an increasing number of immigrant medical professionals whose beliefs and backgrounds clash with Canadian ways. Some discover that the struggle to have their credentials recognized is not the only barrier; there’s also the culture gap. The Markowskis have filed a complaint with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, and Dr. Elias has found herself condemned by gay-rights groups across the country.
The doctor shortage means Canada is increasingly dependent on foreign physicians, who now account for 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the physician work force. So we can expect more cross-cultural conflicts such as this one, says Bill Pope, head of Manitoba’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. “Often, their basic knowledge is good, but it’s all in the way in which you operationalize it in a culture that might be quite different.”
Until recently, cultural problems among foreign doctors have been an underground issue. The subject is touchy, and officials don’t want to appear to be stereotyping ethnic groups in unflattering ways. But Health Canada and other medical groups have realized that it needs far more attention. Foreign medical professionals used to come mostly from the U.K. and South Africa; now they come from China, India, Pakistan and the Middle East, where beliefs and traditions can be radically different. Many male doctors from the Middle East have never performed a pelvic exam. Some doctors have never laid hands on a patient at all. Some insist there’s no such thing as homosexuality in their countries, and many come from cultures where it’s regarded as a grave sin.
Attitudes toward women can be a problem, too. When confronted by a woman showing signs of abuse, some male Muslim doctors are inclined to send her home, with instructions to be nicer to her husband. One pharmacist refused to dispense birth-control pills to a 16-year-old girl, insisting he contact her parents first.
Not all Western practices are necessarily superior, of course. Foreign professionals are deeply shocked—and with good reason—by the shabby way we treat the elderly.
Zubin Austin, a pharmacy professor at the University of Toronto, is helping to develop a nationwide orientation program for foreign health-care professionals. He says one challenging cultural difference is the notion that physician reigns supreme. In most cultures, the doctor’s role is to tell everyone else what to do, and his authority is unquestioned. Canada, by contrast, has embraced a “patient-centred” ethic. In other cultures, for a doctor to admit error or apologize would be unthinkable. “It’s not a behaviour that’s modelled, learned or even accepted,” says Prof. Austin.
Today, most foreign doctors go through some kind of cultural sensitivity training before they get a licence. In Ontario, they have to pass a series of demanding tests involving simulations in which patients are played by trained actors with complicated and misleading symptoms.
“You can’t abandon a patient whose values aren’t the same as yours,” doctors are repeatedly told. And when the values of doctors and their patients are so different, Canada faces yet another multicultural test.
Original article
(Posted on February 3, 2009)
Comments
The “Doctor Shortage” in Canada is entirely self imposed crisis.
I am not sure why this story was put up by American Renaissance. Some of these things are actually things I like about non-Whites. Whites used to be like this too. And considering the cultural conservatism of many people that post at American Renaissance, do we really want homosexuals on our side(even when they are White)?!
I say, “So what?” If the doctor refuses to treat a patient and has a private practice, then the decision should lie with the doctor, not the government. Freedom of association is one of the most fundamental freedoms that a person has. It has already been virtually wiped out in America, along with Canada and the rest of the West. Why should any person be forced to do business with with any other person? Business as well as personal interaction should be a matter of choice. In that very same way, if a patient does not want to go see a Muslim doctor, it should be the patient’s choice.
America was a much freer country before the evil Civil Rights Movement came along. We had something called “freedom of association” which meant that a business could turn away any customers if they did not approve of their race, religion or sexual orientation.
The lesbian couple should take their business elsewhere rather than siccing Big Brother on the Egyptian doctor.
In Canada, it seems that the medical profession is geared up towards eliminating white men from its ranks. Universities boast about how the majority of their medical students and graduates are women - you’d never catch a university boasting about a male majority in engineering schools! A fellow I know has a son in medical school, and this young white man is constantly telling himself he has to stay in the game, because there’s nobody else giving him any encouragement. White women, and people of color regardless of gender - that’s what the medical profession in Canada is really all about these days.
” When confronted by a woman showing signs of abuse, some male Muslim doctors are inclined to send her home, with instructions to be nicer to her husband.”
Hilarious.
If the Canadian radicals believe they can change muslim adherence to thousands of years of tradition and sharia law, they’re in for a big surprise as the country is slowly dominated by the Koran.
Eventually, the multicult elites will be worrying about being stoned or have their hands and feet cut off for what they used to consider minor infractions, and all the time they will be wondering how they could have been so wrong in judging their new friends.
Of course, the browns that immigrate to Canada to become doctors are from a superstitious and unforgiving culture were “honor” comes before reason and social justice. Do gays really deserve to be hanged or turned away from hospitals?
White American upper class yuppies, even with their distorted views on race and immigration, are the best and most functional people on the planet. They should be our doctors, not muslims.
“When confronted by a woman showing signs of abuse, some male Muslim doctors are inclined to send her home, with instructions to be nicer to her husband.”
Disgusting.
It’s the lesbians who need “cultural sensitivity training” to purge themselves of their racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic views.
Gaurav Ahuja is on to something. If 16 year old White girls have a government backed right to adopt the sexual habits of Blacks, without the consent or knowledge of their parents, it’s no wonder that Moslems despise the West. And if the Reds are in favor of unlimited adolescent sex, it should clue in the satyrs among WN that there’s something unhealthy about it.
Most foreign MDs attend four years total of medical school and get a pass because of corporate health care systems that want cheap doctors.
Freedom of association is, as an earlier poster wrote, a fundamental right, and if an MD with a private practice chooses not to treat a certain patient, they should have this option; I’m sure in Canada there are many state-run hospitals that would take them.
If I were Canadian, though, this article would trouble me deeply for another reason: Doctors who have never touched a patient? Who have never given pelvic exams? Who send abuse victims home to their abusers? Why are such persons, obviously dangerously unqualified to practice Western medicine, being allowed to operate in Canada? Should there not be a stronger certification process for immigrant doctors?
The doctor, Kamelia Elias, who works in a Winnipeg clinic, has practised in Canada for five years. She received her medical training in Egypt, and her religion condemns homosexuality.
Is it too soon to hope that maybe lasbians will “come around” and start playing for our team?
Such stories are the result of our skills orientated society. Now we have highly skilled doctors, engineers, IT specialists, scientists and what not coming from the third world, bringing western skills slapped on their backward nature. It is not the skills that create a civilized society but the people that possess them. Skills are just the flowers of civilized mentality never vice versa. But tell this to our global businesses. Skills bring money which brings power. In their greed they do not understand that all those highly skilled will eventually bring down the society which created the skills the businesses proliferated .
What this article doesn’t tell you is that the Egyptian doctor offered to refer the lesbian couple to other doctors in the same clinic who have worked with lesbians before. They refused, just to make a point, and turned around and filed a formal complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission to force the doctor to treat them and other homosexuals, regardless of the doctor’s moral feelings about the issue.
This was not a multi-cultural problem—after all, there are many Christian doctors that would prefer not treating homosexuals for the same reasons as this muslim doctor. There are doctors who refuse to perform abortions, like my father. But the government is making moves to force doctors, against their consciences, to do all types of things, using the threat of public health funding as a weapon.
This is about forcing everyone, regardless of their personal rights, to bow to the Socialist and homosexual agendas, which is destroying normal families all across Canada and the United States.
Feminism, homosexuality, and abortion are all part and parcel of this destructive agenda, which is why, ironically, lesbians are so vocal about abortion rights, yet at the same time want doctors forced to perform in vitro fertilization on them, even if the doctor objects to it from a moral point of view.
I for the life of me can’t understand why the Western countries don’t train more Doctors and create a supply that would force down medical costs also we have an absurd amount of litigation for firvolous reasons that swamp our courts.
“I for the life of me can’t understand why the Western countries don’t train more Doctors and create a supply that would force down medical costs also we have an absurd amount of litigation for firvolous reasons that swamp our courts.”
The solution is simple: allow the import of UNLIMITED numbers of lawyers under the Hindu-1B visa. That way, we can force down the income of all the lawyers so that there will no longer be an incentive to become a lawyer. After all, wasn’t it GREENSPAN who advocated the import of all these foreigners in order to force down the pay of American tech workers? It isn’t for just any reason that Harrison Miller, a lawyer, headed up the industry group group ITAA, who’s job it was to denigrate American tech workers by calling us stupid and error prone, while at the same time advocating the import of virtually unlimited numbers of H-1Bs.
I am an American white male medical student currently, and your comments are correct…it definitely seems like white males are being forced out of this profession….half my class is of Indian/Pakistani origin.
In the past, before PC and law suits and all the other junk, if you did not like what your doctor or other professional person believed you simply left. Go and find another doctor. But today we must stay and FORCE the doctor to change their viewpoints. Silly silly world we live in.
I have the feeling that Andrea and Ginette Markowski, a same-sex couple were shopping for a lot more than a Doctor.
I think they were looking for a lawsuit and a discrimination complaint, much like those groups of 9 or 10 blacks who show up at a crowded non reservation Denny’s type deep pockets chain at 7:30 PM on a Saturday night. Then they file a complaint that they were not seated immediately because of discrimination. The complaint and the EEOC and Justice Department ignore the reality that the tables were all filled and it took some time before 2 or 3 tables became empty and could be pushed together to seat 9 or 10 people.
How did the physician know they were lesbians? They must have told her. The poster who wrote a Doctor has a right to discriminate in her private practice should know that this is the Canadien national health system.
I remember a totally bogus AIDS discrimination law suit against a manicure salon. A gay man with AIDS made an appointment. He arrived and asked to use the phone. He then in a very loud voice discussed his AIDS. Since AIDS is spread by infected blood, the manicurist refused to give him a manicure because he had Karposi’s lesions on his arms that were seeping blood.
Most of the physicians under the age of 50 in S. California are third world foreigners. They too refuse to touch patients and prefer to diagnose without benefit of tests, or a diagnostic interview.
I ws hobbling around on a badly fractured knee cap for 4 years because the foreign physicians employed by my HMO insisted that my problem was “referred pain” caused by a nerve pinched by spinal disks. I kept asking for x rays of my knee because my knee not only hurt but was swollen and I had difficulty walking and sitting down, getting up and even getting in and out of bed.
Oh no these foreign physicians said, nothing wrong with your knee, it’s from a pinched nerve. I had 12 spinal x rays over the years that showed no herniated disks and absolutely nothing to indicate a pinched nerve.
Finally the foreign physician called in sick and her place was taken by an American. I once more requested a knee, not a spinal x ray. Glory hallalueia the physician listened to me and did what I asked. The x ray showed a major fracture in my knee.
The take over by foreign third world physicians is just one more reason to leave S. California, especially if you are getting older or have young children.
Here is an article about one of those marvelous HI B Indians brought to America because we are just too, too stupid to be computer programmers.
February 3, 2009
Exclusive: H1B Visa Holder Attempted Fannie Mae Sabotage – Where’s the Outrage?Michael Cutler
Two things, the doctor is right, Lesbians do tend to have much higher rates of STD’s. Almost every new variant of an STD starts in the gay population, but the largest reservoir of STD’s is still in the black population, just not by percentage. Its a numbers game, those groups tend to have more partners, riskier behaviors, and the pool of people they sleep with also tend to share the same elevated risks. I still remember the hysteria over AIDS in the 80’s, and all of the media campaigns to make it a heterosexual disease. Its ongoing now with the calls for universal testing. I shudder to think at how many false positives in the heterosexual group will lead to suicides, or just as bad stuffing people who don’t have the disease onto dangerous cocktails of harmful drugs. (Both of the methods used can return false positives for a number of reasons, and its far more common than the 1:1000 they claim.)
The second, Canada (Britain, and to a lesser extent the United States) have doctor shortages because of their insistence upon having majority female admissions policies for medical school. Women do NOT stay in the profession very long. A few years into it the vast majority of female physicians marry a doctor or pharmacist, have children, and either leave the profession for good in favor of being a stay at home mom, or if they do go back they go back very part time (usually under 15 hours a week, 10 being average).
Its an extremely rare exception to find an excellent female doctor who has stayed in the field who has kids. They do exist, but the vast majority of female doctors you will encounter will be residents & interns, or 1-2 years post.
The same bias that is in medical school is even more dramatically represented in admissions into pharmacy school. I’ve looked at several, and seeing statements like “60% 70% 80% minority/female enrollment goals” is very commonplace. It makes it much harder for qualified male applicants to even get a chance to go. The discrimination does not stop there though, some colleges also use gender biased selective exclusion criteria to weed out existing students. Get a C in a class at say St Louis College of Pharmacy - and depending on your gender, you may or may not be dropped from the rolls, even those with less than 2 semesters to go. (Happened to someone I know).
Remember that doctors, at least Western ones, take The Hippocratic Oath that tells them they must not turn away anyone or fail to respond to a human being in need.
I might add that if we have many doctors who would not respond to a fellow human being in pain, they probably became a doctor for the wrong reasons. Unfortunately, many become doctors since WW2 because of the promise economic gain.
“I for the life of me can’t understand why the Western countries don’t train more Doctors and create a supply that would force down medical costs also we have an absurd amount of litigation for firvolous reasons that swamp our courts.”
Posted by Pat at 9:03 AM on February 4
Until recently, cultural problems among foreign doctors have been an underground issue. The subject is touchy, and officials don’t want to appear to be stereotyping ethnic groups in unflattering ways.
Sweet… I love it! Sooner or later, the multicult types wind up having to choose between their sacred cows. Blacks or browns? Gays or imports? Women or muslims? This is of course, inevitable.
You have to hand it to the Left: they’re the most fascinating coalition of groups that hate each other.
Here’s what a Muslim Pakistani Doctor thinks of Americans and his patients.
Irfan Nawaz, 32, said he chatted with who he thought were eight to 10 teenage girls and laughed to himself about how stupid and promiscuous they were, according to his 2008 confession played in court Friday.
The admissions drew the ire of the judge and an angry rebuke.
“The only thing that I was thinking was I was laughing at how stupid girls are in this country, and I thanked God I did not marry someone from this country,” Nawaz, a native of Pakistan, says on one recording. He told Circuit Judge John Merrett on Friday he was sorry but said those things because they were true.
At least this Judge did fall for the “Muslim culture” defense. Many California Judges have excused Hmong and Hispanic rapists and would be rapists of under age because rape is part of their “culture.”
Progress!!!!!!!!
Actually, he has a lot nicer view of his American patients than many of the mainland Chinese physicians with whom I have worked. M
any Chinese Drs. think a lot of Americans should be either allowed to die or killed. This view is most often expressed about defective severely premature babies and certain racial groups (neither white nor asian, guess which racial groups the Chinese physicians think should be helped to die?)
But the hospitals, including the Catholic hospitals continue to hire mainland Chinese physicians instead of native born American white physicians who respect the patients right to life and medical treatment no matter what kind of lowlife the patient may be.
Catholic hospitals don’t allow abortion or even D&Cs of rape victims. They should hear what their Chinese physicians say about the right to life in private.
Most foreign MDs attend four years total of medical school and get a pass because of corporate health care systems that want cheap doctors.
In my experience in the Middle East, if the Kuwaitis or Saudis need medical care, they come to the U.S. or England and do not accept 3rd world doctors!!! If they wanted that, they have them in their own countries.
