Content area
Full Text
TORONTO - The previous registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario held the post for 17 years. Now the current one is departing after four.
Dr. John Bonn, who replaced Dr. Michael Dixon in 1997, is leaving the CPSO, an organization that continues to be mired in intense scrutiny.
Each of the issues college staff and its 34 governing councillors have had to deal with are potentially explosive on their own. Together, they've kept college decisions in the media glare.
Issues have included the college's handling of alternative medicine, the need to overhaul its complaints and discipline process, dealing with graduates of foreign medical schools, credentialling the province's doctors in a way that ensures the public's trust, and the apparent need to increase the number of physicians referred for peer review.
Dr. Bonn was unavailable for comment at press time.
The news comes just days after results of a survey commissioned by the CPSO were released in its journal Members' Dialogue. The survey found overwhelming support (97%) for self-regulation among doctors but considerably less so among public participants (64%).
On another front, doctors who have gone through what can sometimes be a lengthy complaints and discipline process were more likely to rate it positively than...