Are Virtual Doctors “Actually” Useful?

Virtual pediatric urgent care arrives in Alberta, Canada

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Steve Jobs

I was rusty.

I felt rusty, at least.

It had been forever, seemingly, since I attended patients as an emergency physician.

A couple years earlier I’d been sailing along happily in my clinical career when a cancer diagnosis blew in like a hurricane, shredding my sails and dumping me into a sea of medical and surgical misery.

In the months that followed it was unclear whether I would survive.

But survive I did, thanks to the wizardry of superb doctors — and in no small part to the tenacity of my wife, who left no stone unturned and no medical opinion unchallenged.

On a bright, wintry Tuesday morning more than two years later — ship righted and sails mostly mended — I tacked my way with trepidation back into the emergency department at Alberta Children’s Hospital: nervous but determined to get back in the mix.

The department was bustling. A team was busy in the code room resuscitating a critically ill teenager with a perforated appendix. The waiting room was stuffed with kids…