To OUR Future Generations

“It is curious--curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.” ~ Mark Twain?

The power of moral courage, as a collective feature, is unlimited when those eager for change or transformation unite and stand together, and when organizational and institutional leaders have the appetite for telling the truth, keeping promises, or helping those in need.?It is my belief, that through collective moral courage, the journey to influencing and shaping OUR healthcare with everlasting impact, requires two things, a critical mass of devoted members of society and government’s desire to support their action.

In my first post, I reflected on what we might say if we were to write a letter to our Fathers of Medicare, given the present state of OUR healthcare, acknowledging how with courage, we must revise healthcare together, where government empowers and welcomes to the fold those of us willing to commit to such a monumental mission.

Next, I penned a message as an appeal to the morally courageous folk who have advanced to the ‘action and willpower’ stage, understanding, and accepting such transformation is past due and as such, agree what is needed most is the coordination of likeminded citizens to achieve the powerful critical mass necessary to chart a better course for healthcare.?

Following those observations, I underscored how the lifeline guide to sustaining the value of OUR healthcare, for both today and for tomorrow, might just be as simple as rewriting an uplifting narrative grounded in collective gratitude.

The overarching theme in all three pieces is moral courage as it relates to ethical obligations.?Our individual capacity to overcome fear and speak or act in support of fundamental beliefs and highest priorities; tapping into our internal compass of principles that drive our individual personal decisions and behaviours cannot be underestimated.?

As humans, ethical responsibility or morally required form of conduct, holds us accountable for fulfilling our civic duty, where our actions benefit the whole of civilization, and where there is balance in the well-being, sustainability, and economic growth of society.

Although moral obligations require us to pursue what we believe is right and thus, act accordingly, universal truths sometimes seem to differ and change.?One universal truth I hope never changes, is the belief that safeguarding is the responsibility of everyone in society.

I grappled with what would be the reasonable next set of thoughts to share in the hopes of arousing interest and gaining momentum in safeguarding OUR healthcare.?What is the magic to getting a crowd’s attention; the crowd being all the other Nova Scotians and Canadians who are concerned about the state of OUR healthcare.?

The increasing number of patients needing a family doctor to the excessive wait times in the ER and Walk in Clinics, the chronic healthcare worker shortages to the exhaustion, burnout and attrition plaguing our nurses, CCAs, and doctors and the grossly underfunded long-term care sector to the apprehensions of intermingling federal funding, provincial jurisdictions, and private healthcare all deserve the spotlight.?

Scanning where the most intense issues are presently landing, didn’t lead me to a preferred topic, but it did confirm public apprehension toward the state of OUR healthcare is rising.?According to the latest weekly issue tracking by Nanos Research on February 1, 2023, more Canadians identify health care as their biggest national concern now than at any point since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.?This was a bittersweet discovery.?It reinforced the status of OUR healthcare is on almost everyone’s mind, a critical component to successfully engaging others to commit to making a difference in the state of OUR healthcare.?But it also signaled the seriousness of OUR healthcare situation and reinforced the inevitable, how together, we must power progress through self-sustaining momentum.

It still had me reflecting on what was the best focus for my writing … what part was most concerning to the masses? when would the aha moments begin to emerge? how much would a loved one have to suffer before there was interest in being involved? how do we rally together for change?

Then it occurred to me, what about a variation of my first post, instead of a retrospective letter to our Fathers of Medicare, why not pose a prospective letter to our future generations, rationalizing why we sat idly by through the unremitting deterioration of OUR healthcare and why we didn’t use our collective strengths sooner to bring about change for our own benefit and ultimately for theirs.

After a few reiterations, I decided the words below would make for a most interesting letter.

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April 24, 2023

To OUR Future Generations:

We hope this letter finds you and your loved ones accessing safe, quality, and timely Medicare that meets your vision of health in the 22nd century.

We are sure you have lots of questions, questions about why as informed, well-educated, articulate, caring members of society we did not step up and support where and when we could to save OUR healthcare, with more than just criticism and blame.?You are probably also trying to understand why the governments of the day neglected to set the stage for unity or to empower and welcome to the fold those of us prepared to do so.?

Possibly, you are wondering why we could not see the urgency in accessing every expertise, and every viable resource to prevent life-altering consequences for ourselves, our elders, our children, and our generations to come – like yours.??

You might be in a state of bewilderment by what, although clearly apparent to you in hindsight, should have been considerably obvious to us at the time.?That there were numerous watershed moments we missed, those exact occasions where we undoubtedly should have stood up and helped change the direction of OUR healthcare.

We do not know how to describe the occurrence of events that led to the catastrophic state we found ourselves in and cannot explain why we didn’t define a plan or establish a timeline to get it all back on track sooner.

However, we assure you that OUR healthcare started out in the twentieth century with great momentum, thanks to the passion, commitment, and common ground of the Fathers of Healthcare.?At first, we enjoyed the optimistic future projected in the first few decades, with experiences and trends shaping what appeared as a bright healthcare system of the future, with hopefulness at the heart.

The blueprint for healthcare was promising.?The technology, research, products, and services were foreshadowed by all the great advances we were witnessing.

But then healthcare started to take a slide, slowly at first, even without our realization.?We were faced with big challenges - population decline, a pandemic and more. We then seemed to struggle in defining the necessary priorities to addressing our ever-changing healthcare landscape.?We went on to miss all the significances it encompassed, the fluctuations, challenges, and progress in all spheres - medicine, technology, scopes of practice, demographics, diversifying needs, the economy and societal expectations.

There is no sense in pointing blame at this juncture, or even giving you a laundry list of excuses, we just hope your moral courage is stronger and steadier for the present and future of YOUR healthcare.

Luckily, after this sequence of events, we eventually got it right. Our moral courage united.?We worked until there was a monumental change and we changed the course of history. We hope in the words of poet Robert Frost- “We took the road not taken and that has made all the difference!”

Fondly,?

Your Families from the 21st Century