The issue of establishing patient trust and confidence in the medical system was front and centre in Edmonton Thursday.
Covenant Health brought together health care providers from across the province for what was billed as an honest conversation about the hopes and expectations of patients that may not live up to the realities of the health care system.
"What we're really trying to do is open up societal and public dialogue about some of the issues that we're facing on a daily basis in our hospitals," said Dr. Mark Ewanchuk, an intensive care physician speaking at the one-day conference.
Ewanchuk says that many patients have developed unrealistic expectations of what the outcome of a situation can be, thanks in part to TV medical dramas, where lives are saved on a regular basis.
"It's no one's fault that we have this ethical dilemma, we have unbridled expectation against kind of limited resources," Ewanchuk said.
New technologies and media coverage of incredible surgeries and diagnoses have heightened expectations of recoveries or rehabilitations that may or may not come to fruition. Ewanchuk says that both doctors and patients have a role to play in managing expectations.
"It's going to take a long time, one patient at a time, it's going to take listening, compassion and it's going to take the public realizing right from the get go that we don't like losing people," Ewanchuk said. "We don't like it when people die, we do have your best interests at heart."
With files from Shane Jones.
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