Lesbian doctor is first openly gay president of the Canadian Medical Association
The Canadian Medical Association has its first openly gay president.
Anna Reid MD officially became the president of the CMA at their national convention in Yellowknife, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, where she works as an emergency room doctor.
The body has 76,000 members, and installed Doctor Reid as their president earlier this month. She will hold the position for a year.
In her inaugural address to the CMA, Dr Reid spoke about the need for patient-centric care, for better service to the nation’s aboriginal people, and for doctors to work collaboratively, as reported on radio station CJCD.
Speaking to Toronto’s Globe and Mail, she said: “there is a growing gap between the services available in urban and rural areas of Canada, as well as between wealthy and poor jurisdictions.”
She also mentioned alongside her aboriginal patients, she also felt a specific responsibility towards her patients with mental health problems and the lonely and elderly ones, adding that she wanted to “advocate for the marginalised.”
Dr Reid, a graduate of the University of Ottawa, is only the sixth woman to be president of the body. She told the Globe and Mail: “Being a woman has never stood in the way of my doing anything – and neither has being lesbian.”
