Do you visit a doctor when you get sick, or do you Google the symptoms and then look for an “at-home cancer remedy?” While people should be wary of searching their symptoms online — because the internet cannot accurately provide tailored medical advice — the Canadian healthcare shortage is pushing more Canadians to resort to online searches when they can’t make an appointment with a doctor.
In 2018, SecondStreet.org, a think tank that examines government policies, started a count of people who died waiting for surgery or diagnostics. That number has grown to over 74,000 names now, with a gut-wrenching tally of 15,474 Canadians dying in 2023-24. However, this number is incomplete, with missing data from Quebec, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Manitoba. With that in mind, the real number becomes a horrifying prospect.
The Canadian healthcare system is overwhelmed, evidenced by two things: the number of people who died waiting for surgeries or diagnostics, and the wait times for non-emergency surgeries, which reached an all-time high of 30 weeks from referral until treatment. Additionally, patients arriving at the emergency room may wait as much as 22 hours before being treated — nearly three times higher than the recommended time frame.
When I came to Canada in 2022, I experienced this first hand. I checked myself into the emergency room and endured a 10 hour-long wait. Even at 11 p.m., there were barely any seats left. Everyone there was so tortured from the pain that they were either checked out, staring into the distance, or taking their frustration out on the nurses.
Long waiting times aren’t just limited to the ER or surgeries. Finding an appointment with a specialist in a specific area can take months! So where do they go when they need to know what’s wrong with their health? According to a recent survey by the Canadian Medical Association, a third of Canadians resort to finding help online because, due to shortages, seeing a doctor is not viable.
Another factor affecting the performance of the public healthcare system is the overuse of medical resources. Research shows a negative correlation between patient satisfaction and the public’s trust in the healthcare system, leading to the overconsumption of medical resources. For example, when patients are dissatisfied with their treatment, they might be given more treatment than is necessary, or are subjected to unnecessary tests. By using those resources, they might become unavailable to other patients who truly need them.
It is the doctor’s responsibility to foster good communication with their patients, and poor communication often leads to misdiagnosis and ill treatment that ultimately affect the patient negatively. After a bad encounter, a person may take time to trust medical professionals again.
This ties into another possible cause of dissatisfaction with the health system, stemming from the spread of medical misinformation — ranging from people thinking that sunscreen causes cancer to the belief that vaccination causes autism — there is no end to what people may believe to be true when science differs. Between March and November of 2021, COVID-19 misinformation around vaccines led to 13,000 hospitalizations, 3,500 ICU admissions, and 2,800 deaths, costing $300 million Canadian. This serves as a prime example of what misinformation regarding medical care can lead to.
The government has tried to fix the system by spending a grand sum of money ($344 billion in 2023), but that has clearly failed to yield results. Canadians are losing hope, but the problem clearly isn’t just funding — the ER and surgery backlog since the pandemic and the short-staffed rural hospitals are major reasons as well. Those aren’t in our control — but what we choose to believe is.
Other findings mentioned earlier in the Canadian Medical Association survey show that 43 per cent of Canadians are highly susceptible to medical misinformation online. Despite social media companies’ attempts to combat misinformation, there is always the possibility that some of it slips past. Another obstacle to combating misinformation is that Meta announced they will stop fact-checking posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Combined, these platforms have more than three billion users.
The healthcare problem is a complex one. There are too many factors affecting it, and unless all of them are tackled, more people will die. The responsibility for those problems ultimately falls on the ones in charge. However, that doesn’t make you helpless. Every time you look at a new claim on the internet, ask yourself: “Is this real?” Medical misinformation, public trust in healthcare, and healthcare functionality all tie into a cycle that crushes those caught in it. It is more important than ever to question what you see.
