The President of the B.C. Medical Association will be coming to Whistler to talk about health care issues at the next Dialogue Café.
Among the topics close to Dr. John Turner's heart is getting input from the health care workers themselves on how to make the health care system better.
"If you are going to reform a system, and the (B.C.) system needs reforming badly, then you have to involve the people who are the front line workers and those front line workers are the nurses and the doctors," said Turner.
"Unless you have their input into the system, any changes you implement from the top down are not going to work."
Turner, who is a practicing obstetrician/gynecologist at the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, said one of the biggest challenges in the system to date is the emergency room back ups.
"We need to open beds," he said,
"We need to have more nurses in the system. We need to have some long-term planning in terms of how many doctors we need and what sort of doctors we need."
This is critical in light of B.C.'s again population.
Turner will be sparking a discussion on A Doctor's Prescription for Health Care Planning at the next Dialogue Café on Sunday, March 7 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at the Whistler Health Care Centre’s boardroom. Everyone is welcome to attend.
If the topic of health care doesn't tickle your toes there will be another Dialogue Café on Wednesday, March 10 at the Myrtle Philip School Lounge.
Whistler Librarian Joan Richoz and Jody Edgar of Jody's Internet Café will start off a discussion on Libraries in the Internet Age, from 7:30 to 9 p.m.
