Survey results: Why did more than 70% not bother to vote in 2016 Doctors of BC elections

Public

The results on the survey so far may come as a surprise.

Was it fair to ask these questions? Some comments have questioned this, but these are some of the questions that doctors have been asking each other in hallways, over coffee, and at meetings. So why not ask them in a survey?

The survey was not sponsored by anyone. All members of doclounge can use the survey tools to create a questionnaire and the survey was made public to allow the questions to be answered anonymously. The tools can be used for any kind of survey.

What are the results of the survey?

Here are the raw results:

Is electronic voting a good thing?

77% Yes, 19% No, 4% Other

"Pros and cons. Devil is in the details"

"Not necessarily. It becomes harder to track fraud when there isn't a paper trail."

Is Doctors of BC a waste of time and money?

62% Yes, 38% No

Is the Board open and transparent?

12% Yes, 81% No, 8% No response.

Is the Board self-serving?

73% Yes, 19% No, 8% No response.

Is the Board subservient to Government?

58% Yes, 31% No, 8% No response.

Is the Board an insiders club?

85% Yes,  8% No, 8% No response.

Will a smaller Board concentrate power in fewer hands?

54% Yes, 27% No, 19% Other.

"Possibly, yes."

"May be better but potential to make things worse!"

"The executive of the BCMA is self serving and out of touch most of the time. whether big or small"

"Probably"

"It cannot be any less accountable than the waste-of-money Board of 38."

"It will make no difference"

"Depends on who is in place"

"It depends on how the overall power is distributed."

Should the CEO be a doctor?

42% Yes, 19% No, 27% Doesn't matter, 12% Other

"Better to be a doctor, but must be qualified, competent, and ethical."

"Not sure"

Are you a doctor, medical student, or resident in training?

96% Yes, 0% No, 4% No response.

Are you a member of the organization, Doctors of BC?

77% Yes, 19% No, 4% No response.

Are you on the Board or committees?

4% Yes, 92% No, 4% No response.

Comments:

"As soon as the rand formula gets destroyed. Doctors of BC will disappear."

"Main problem is (1) Lack of interest (2) Inability of BCMA to deal with disparity issue."

"I almost always vote. This was a stealth election that snuck up and I couldn't find the email link to vote and decided it wasn't worth spending more time to find it!"

"It's always the same people who overstay their tenure and to remain part of the club will then jockey for positions on this committee or that one or find a way to move on to CMA. The voters are just tired of seeing the same names over and over. I saw the whole process unfold as i remained a board member for 12 years."

"It should be renamed the British Columbia General Practitioner's Association.  There is no place for specialists in the organization.  We get nothing, our money is used to fund negotiations where the lion's share of the money goes to GP's who can now bill a million dollars a year for sitting around and filling out forms.  How ironic that one of the recent presidents (a GP) was proud of the fact she billed over $750,000.00 per year, while I did 6 more years of training, do call every third night and every third weekend, but have never billed more than 50% of her billings.  Think something is wrong with that picture??"

"Speaking of open and transparent - Who has sponsored this survey?!?"

"How the h.. does a lawyer become the ceo for Doctors? I bet no doctor could ever be ceo for the Law society. It's an example of how dysfunctional the board has become."

"I think the Doctors of BC is far too concerned with it's image re what the patients and MOH thinks, and less concerned with advocating for it's members. While I agree that we should "partner" with the MOH in developing patient delivery services, Doctors of BC is so concerned that the gov't will act unilaterally, that it actually condones much of the bad behaviour of the Gov't towards Doctors. Again, many in that organization are self interested and little empire builders, wanting to be perceived by Gov't as team players, at the cost of actually advocating for Physicians who actually provide services."

"Many questions above should have had a "maybe", or "partially" option."

"The outfit's a dud, no good to us anymore and the college is worse."

"I'm a member because the benefits are too expensive not to be. I vote. My candidate always loses."

"Very disappointed in the leadership. The MSP audits are a huge example of where physicians are actually being abused and have very little way of being able to protest re the procedure."

"This survey is incredibly biased and self serving. Open-ended questions would make it far more meaningful. The fact remains that there has never been a high voter turnout in the history of the BCMA/DOBC and that the voter turnout has actually been better since the introduction  of electronic voting. That does not mean that the election process could not be improved. For instance, actually having the ability for candidates to debate would be an interesting concept!"

"Doctors of BC has not taken a position on the most important issues
1)  Lack of GP, too many specialists, specialists cannot return to GP practice after their training if they cannot find a job---only going to be solved by going back to a one year rotating internship
2)  Bloated bureaucracy.  Need to disband Regional Health Authorities and return money to patient care (Bureaucracy is absorbing 15% of funding rather than the 5% when I graduated in 1984---we could do a lot with 10% more money and fewer bureaucrats to get in the way of patient care)."