Nov 6, 2024
Ontario Premier Doug Ford made reckless statements on Oct. 25 that we as emergency physicians must correct. It is patients who decide what is a medical emergency. This ensures those with time-sensitive and unforeseen emergencies get the care that they need.
Premier Ford bemoaned a woman with a sore throat seeking emergency department (ED) care. He scolded “little Johnny” with an injured knee and a laceration seeking ED care. He dismissed someone with a headache. The Premier advised, “Go to your family physician first and he’ll determine if you’re going to the (ED).”
Firstly, 50 percent of family physicians are not “he.”
Secondly, these statements are dangerous.
It’s callous to belittle those seeking ED care. As physicians know, the eyes don’t see what the mind doesn’t know. If you only know a sore throat is a benign virus, it’s because you didn’t go to medical school. In reality, we see serious causes of sore throat regularly, including epiglottis and deep-space infections. To diagnose these, we do a careful assessment and undertake testing when required. Many end up being a benign cause, but that’s after an evaluation – not a Monday-morning football call by a politician. A sore throat can end up in the resuscitation room with an anesthesiology STAT page to help secure the airway and the patient ending up in the ICU. This applies to children – some “sore throats” get admitted to hospital requiring multiple specialists. Medicine isn’t spit-balling.
We’ve seen headaches end up as meningitis, brain abscess, stroke, torn neck arteries and brain cancer. Others suffer migraine needing intravenous treatment, acute glaucoma needing immediate specialist involvement and inflamed scalp arteries requiring high-dose steroids to avoid blindness. It requires training to rule out the worst and decide what’s most likely. This is the reason it takes seven to nine years of training to become an ED physician.
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