My Canadian Experience

Having a lot of family in Toronto, I visit Canada at least once a year, and over a span of 22 years of doing so, I was bound to come down with something at least once and need a visit to the doctor. Unfortunately (or fortunately), however, I'm not a Canadian citizen so I wasn't entitled to get the access to healthcare that everyone else in the waiting room was getting (luckily the doctor was my aunt's neighbor though so he hooked it up).

BUT, I did notice a little bit about how things worked and looking back on it, it resembles the United States' version of an emergency room. Patients would enter and sign in with the receptionist and give a brief description of what was wrong and fill out the necessary paperwork and give some form of documentation (I don't remember exactly what it was because I wasn't paying very close attention to it at the time). The patients then proceeded to wait until their turn to see the doctor and would then be treated.

Interestingly, most of these "primary care doctors" (I put it in quotes because I don't know what they're known as up in Canada) work in offices that they don't individually own and these offices are often right next to pharmacies such as Shoppers Drug Mart, with doors connecting the two to one another.

That's all that I really remember from my personal experience there other than the people working in the offices were much more friendly than ones I've encountered here. Maybe the movie will bring back some more memories tomorrow morning though.