Foreign-trained health professionals could help alleviate the strain Canada’s medical system is fast becoming a disaster area and a tragedy. There are not nearly enough family doctors to provide primary health care. Walk-in clinics were supposed to backfill this need, but many now do not take walk-ins as their registered patient load is already beyond…
Tuktu services include driving, shopping, housekeeping, companionship and technical help, all at an affordable cost The year 2022 is finally over, and most of us would say good riddance. It was a year of wars and plagues, floods and famines, autocrats and accidents, inflation and uncertainty. As we start 2023, we really need to find…
Drug overdose deaths approaching 2,000 annually Does passive policing and harm reduction improve health and safety? Vancouver is a living, breathing example to the contrary – or perhaps more like a dying, gasping person. In his film Vancouver is Dying, Aaron Gunn demonstrates the rot of addiction and criminality that is destroying one of Canada’s…
Fewer than 100 individuals generate almost all the burden placed on emergency services Chatham House Rules – a system for holding debates and discussion panels on controversial topics – were named after the headquarters of the UK Royal Institute of International Affairs, which is based in Chatham House, London. The rule originated in June 1927.…
Will they take the money and run or stick to their principles? Family doctors in British Columbia seem to have struck gold this week. The province offered a $135,000, 54 per cent raise in return for a change from fee-for-service to a rostered – or what’s known as capitation-style – practice. This means average total…
Political expediency once again trumps the realities of fixing health care
Canada’s health-care system continues to implode and fail Canadian patients at a catastrophic level. Systemic problems and staffing issues are overwhelming health care delivery, and people are dying from a lack of proper care. Daily news reports now relate the most egregious dysfunctions as patients sought help and instead found themselves in a chaotic system…
Do we or the government own our bodies?
Former B.C. deputy minister of health Lawrie McFarlane’s July 24 commentary on the “Cambie Surgery Centre ruling” (a descriptive that ignores two cancer patients and three children who were co-plaintiffs) contained some valid commentary. The crisis we now face in our health system is there for all to see and observe. Notably, McFarlane offers no solutions.…
Drug users are going to keep using, so a better route to saving lives is to ensure drugs are clean and safe
We’re supposed to be merry and bright as we approach the holidays and the new year. This year, there are many reasons to be less cheerful and festive. We’ve managed to make it through floods, fires and heat domes, but the pandemic persists with the Omicron mutation, inflation threatens our economy and the big, ugly…
We have learned nothing from the recent past
The new normal. It's a phrase that trips lightly off the lips. But, is the new normal actually something that has changed our behaviour? I don't think so. The new normal implies that the restrictions and practices of the last year and a half have changed the way we live and move. It implies that…
‘This is about the B.C. government destroying a sanctuary for dying patients who want the choice to stay in a facility where MAID is not offered’
You might think the middle of a global pandemic is less than an ideal time to disrupt the operations of a hospice where palliative care patients receive comfort as they approach death. If so, you would not share the apparent thinking of the B.C. government or its local Fraser Health Authority, which is forcing layoffs…