Like many others that attended the Provincial Governments “Conversation on Health” held in Smithers last week, I came armed with stories, articles and facts to discuss and share with the Health Minister. He, George Abbott, wasn’t there. In fact there was no health authority or health professional attending this gathering. Even more disconcerting, most of the assembled discussion groups were facilitated by members from the Ministry of Forests.

Here’s the way it worked. We all gathered into a conference room consisting of between 45 to 50 attendees and a slightly smaller number of government representatives. Government Minister Hogg welcomed us and in a typical “toastmasters” fashion told a couple of funny stories with some hard facts about bad nutrition and then he disappeared. The facilitator then took over and informed us that we were all likely cynics, that she was prepared for that and was willing to work with this fact regardless. She was very polite and quite pleasant. Very well suited to her job and I would hire her in an instant. That is if I needed her abilities. And had the money.

We were quickly led into the first step of the days work. One at a time we would take the microphone and in one short “concise” statement we were to say what we wanted to address about health care. The mike rapidly move around the room and as each of us stated our concern we passed the mike back to a forestry worker and went to a table where we would right down what we said on a big piece of paper with a bold black marker. These would then get carried away and randomly taped to one of three sections on a wall. Many of us, myself included, took the mike more than once and so, by the time we were done, between 80 and 90 topics were taped up to the walls, roughly say, maybe 28 in each of the three sections. Each topic was also assigned a number. As you can imagine many of these topics were very similar in concept with maybe a slightly different wording. No one attempted to consolidate these topics into a more manageable format. Similar topics in each section were also in more than one of the three sections.

The next step was for us to select one or more topics from each of the three sections that we wished to discuss. Helium filled balloons with numbers corresponding to the topic numbers were placed around the conference room. We were informed that we would be sitting down in groups wishing to discuss the same topic, and we would chose a topic from section one for the first sitting, and one from the second section for the second sitting and so on. Of course I wanted to choose my topics. However other topics were so similar in context I selected more numbers for each sitting. So for our first discussion we assembled with others under the appropriate number balloon.

Are you good at math? Lets take the high estimation of 50 participants. And then lets take the low end of topics, say 25. At the very best, if each topic was addressed, we would have averaged two participants per discussion group. Some topics were not addressed.

Each group was given a sheet of paper where we were to record: the topic, the concern, what’s working, what’s not and the solution. I had the opportunity to fill out two of these without any argument or discussion. Yup, I sat alone to fill out a couple of these papers. I joined other groups too and shared my thoughts and listened to other perspectives and found that everyone was very polite and cooperative. It is very important to note here that there was no input to these groups from the health professionals. It was just us Northwesters all talking amongst ourselves. I believe the point was to feel better, healthier. This process repeated itself for all three sections.

The afternoon took us to discussing the Health Ministry’s ten assigned topics. We were given two different coloured sticky notes to apply to two posters of these 10 different topics that we wished to discuss. One colour would be for the first session and of course then the second colour was for the second gathering of participants. Each of these discussions, we were told, would be about half an hour. Our job was to discuss the topic and come up with a concise statement that reflected our finding on the topic. Forestry professional facilitated each of the groups.

The topics were:

1) Mental Health/Addictions/Substance Abuse
2) Health Care Delivery
3) Seniors and Aging
4) Emergency Departments
5) Health Human Resources
6) End of Life Care
7) Primary Health Care
8) Pressures on the Health Care System
9) The Canada Health Act
10) Chronic Disease Prevention and Management

So if you do the math, again, we come up with about 5 people for each group, which is about what I experienced. We all got to share our opinions together and express our; concerns, displeasure, frustrations, and knowledge, pump up our chests, shake our heads, grunt in acknowledgment and generally have a happy old time sharing how clever we all were.

Simply put this was not a serious exercise. The material, delivered earlier to each participant, that addressed each government topic, contained references to other countries where private Medicare works better, used selected statistics, briefly mentioned court cases and then asked our opinions, as if we were now well informed and attempted to provide a foundation to open a discussion (called conversation starters) that had no balance to the perspective.

I have attached a couple of these pages as examples.

The most difficult item I encountered, being the cynic I am as the facilitator so aptly recognized in all of the participants, was the “Consent for Disclosure” form.

I hereby give permission to the Province of British Columbia, its employees, representatives, licensees and assigns, the right to use, reproduce, modify, publish or distribute to the public my voice, image or likeness in the Recordings worldwide for educational, advertising, promotional, commercial and informational purposes, including by virtue of posting my voice, image or likeness in the Recordings on the Government of British Columbia website or the Conversation on Health website. This consent is valid for the life of the website and all related reports.

I was told if I didn’t sign this I could not attend. Hells Bells eh? I attended. Can’t wait to see what they do with me now.