We're fortunate in a sense, since our doctor of 40 years having retired, leaving us at age 74 without a personal physician, that we were both taken up singly, by other family doctors. Judging from their names and their accents, our new doctors are symbolic of East Europe's loss, and Canada's gain.

The shortage of general practitioners in Canada is acute, in some provinces more than others, since our medical schools are not churning out enough MDs to meet the challenge of an ever-growing population - and mostly through immigration to this country. As long as sufficient trained physicians emigrate from their countries of origin, along with other types migrating to greener pastures, as it were, we can keep our heads above water, so to speak.

But because of the shortage, many people, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, are without primary health-care specialists. That has led to a situation of overcrowding at those doctors' offices which have accepted possibly more patients than their practise can comfortably service. But there is also a growing trend toward multiple practitioners operating out of clinic-like offices, as opposed to the traditional single-physician office.

That too has led to an atmosphere where patients are being treated as though they represent widgets on a production line - to be serviced as expeditiously and impersonally as possible, to ensure that as little time as possible is spent on the needs of any single patient.

Hopefully, without impairing the level of treatment and attention required by any single patient.