Sep 01, 2010- 3:40 PM
In 2006, my mother and I learned that we no longer had a family doctor, as he had closed his practice, with no advance notice to any patients.
After many futile attempts to find another family doctor, we were advised through a pharmacy to contact the nurse practitioner clinic, which had just opened in 2007.
We were very happy to learn of this new medical institution, and went to register ourselves. We filled out appropriate forms and were told that we would be notified when everything was clerically finalized.
After three weeks of not hearing anything from the clinic, I decided to call and ask why we had not heard back from them. Their answer, to this day, still echoes in my mind — “We can’t take on you and your mother because you are both too sick.”
I was stunned. My mother and I suffer with arthritis, lupus and fibromyalgia, but we have a wonderful internal medicine doctor who treats these illnesses exclusively.
This doctor, however, as you can appreciate, does not treat any other type of illness, and has told us that our family doctor must deal with anything else. Naturally we assumed any other minor ailment might be addressed by the nurse practitioner clinic. Not so. We were classified as “being too sick” to attend the clinic.
My question to these “wonderful, newly acclaimed practitioner nurses” is this — who do you treat if you deny someone because you consider them “too sick,” keeping in mind that we were not seeking medical attention for our above described illnesses. Since when is someone considered too sick to attend such a clinic?
In the interim, we have since found a wonderful, caring and compassionate family doctor, but still can’t help but wonder who these nurses treat. It sounds to me that you have to be extremely healthy before you can seek their services.
D. Duval
Greater Sudbury
