Doctors becoming less caring, patients say: Maclean's poll

TORONTO, Ont. - The new cover story in the latest edition of Maclean's magazine asks, "Do you trust your doctor"?

An exclusive poll by the magazine found that 40 per cent of Canadians believe physicians across the country care less about their patients than they did a decade ago.

The Maclean's article said that many go in to see the doctor and just feel rushed.

The magazine's national correspondent Charlie Gillis told 680News that doctors have a lot of patients to see and are basically squeezing people in over the course of a long shift.

"People go in, they have a few minutes with the doctor and provide them with a prescription, then they're out the door again," Gillis said.

The magazine also found that one in five Canadians feel physicians are more likely to make mistakes than they were a decade ago, and more than 50 per cent feel doctors are less likely to own up to those mistakes.

Gillis said they spoke directly to doctors about this issue. "Doctors operate in a profession where making mistakes can be very costly and when things go wrong, they don't want to discuss broadly as other professions may be willing to discuss failures in their area," he said.

"We think that patients are becoming a little bit more skeptical and they're becoming a lot more demanding of information. They want to know a lot about their doctors' track record and they want to know a lot more about the type of treatment that they're going to be able to get," Gillis added.