OMA Podcast with Dr. Paul Roumeliotis
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Georgia Balogiannis: In this podcast the Ontario Medical Association looks at current issues of interest in health care. Spotlight on Health gives you all the straight talk. We're Ontario's doctors and your health matters to us.
I'm Georgia Balogiannis for the Ontario Medical Association.
Doctors are calling for an end to the bullying, attacks and threats of violence many on health care’s front lines have been subjected to throughout the pandemic and which have escalated to new levels.
In this first, of a two-part series, we speak to Dr. Paul Roumeliotis, a pediatrician and medical officer of health, CEO of the Eastern Ontario Health Unit and president of the Association of Local Public Health Agencies. He discusses the impacts threats and abuse are having on health care providers.
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Dr. Paul Roumeliotis: For the most part we were talking about a very loud vocal minority that is behaving in an unacceptable manner.
Talking about public health, I can say that not only public health physicians, medical offices of health across Ontario, we've been in the spotlight probably more than other physicians have because of the fact that we are the ones that are really enforcing, directing the local measures masking and so on.
But I can also tell you that the threats, intimidation and the protests and so on, are affecting all of our public health staff. Tt's not only the physicians, we have we have a whole wide spectrum of staff working in our clinics.
It is a shame Windsor now has will have police presence. We had been asked by the province to ensure that we have police on site or ready to go on site to all of our clinics or pediatrics, and I can tell you that most of our colleagues report the same thing, they've received intimidating letters, harassment, online abuse,
protests in front of their health units. We’ve had multiple in font of our health units where we’ve had to call in security and police involvement and so on.
I know that one of the health units some people actually went into the health unit and started threatening to arrest that staff and that really instills a lot of fear.
So, what we're trying to say is that we're trying to do our best, we're working with all our colleagues. This is really an all hands-on deck approach to be able to get rid of this pandemic which has really changed our lives and we're looking at the light at the end of the tunnel but we have a bit more work to do.
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Dr. Roumeliotis: What we do need is really for people to understand the stress and burnout that's being experienced by all of our staff in public health across Ontario and across Canada I’m sure.
People have a right to their opinion, this is a free country, obviously, but I think people should also understand that unlike other issues choosing not to be vaccinated or choosing not to wear a mask not only puts you in danger but also puts the public in danger.
And so, I think that we need to take a step back and look at what we can do to protect our community and our loved ones around us.
This is an extra ordinary time in history, unprecedented where we have had lock downs, people losing their livelihoods, very well understood. But, we did it because we wanted to save lives and even with that we've lost a significant amount of people.
Dying, I think in Ontario over 10,000 people have died, 5 million worldwide. And so, this is a significant problem that has occurred.
Again, I hope is once in a lifetime, once in multiple generations but this is not regular time, this is not, this is a time of a pandemic, a worldwide pandemic, where we have a responsibility to the social and community good that in many cases overrides personal freedoms, if you if you look at it that way and it really has to do with protecting the ones around us in a collective way.
And that's what public health is, we work collectively to be able to protect one another and the Community.
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Georgia Balogiannis: This podcast is brought to you by the Ontario Medical Association and is edited and produced by Jodi Crawford Productions. To learn more about the Ontario Medical Association, please visit oma.org
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