doctors

What’s in a name – defining hospitalists in Canada

Vandad Yousefi

Over the past two decades, delivery of inpatient care at acute care institutions has changed dramatically in Canada, with fewer family doctors following their patients in hospitals and the emergence of a growing number of hospitalists. Despite this growth, there is no uniform understanding of who hospitalists are, what they do and what types of

It’s not just about you – screw the flu!

Seema Marwaha

The Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) recently won an arbitration against Sault Area Hospital striking down their ‘vaccinate-or-mask’ policy. The arbitrator Jim Hayes found the policy was unreasonable, and a “coercive” tool to force heath-care workers to get a flu shot.  While this decision is only binding to Sault Area Hospital, many hospitals across Ontario will

More Ontarians should have access to team-based primary care

In our family medicine practice, we regularly ask patients to give us feedback on how we’re doing. They tell us, over and over, that one of the things they like best about our practice is the teamwork – how much they love their doctor but also their social worker, or nurse, or dietitian. And how

The role of call scheduling in resident burnout

Kieran Quinn

Today my son Hunter is 821 days old (2 years, 3 months, 0 days). As a resident, I have spent 129 of those days in the hospital while on call; after-hours care that are over and above my ‘regular’ working day (0 years, 4 months, 3 days). In other words, I have missed 15% of

Culture of bullying: what can medicine learn from the Ghomeshi report?

Maureen Taylor

When people learn that I pivoted from broadcast journalism to health care, they are rightly surprised: the two fields don’t seem to have a lot in common. But in my experience, they share at least this:  both occasionally celebrate a culture of blame, celebrity and an eat-your-young mentality that fosters fear, undermines team work and

Modernizing scopes of practice to improve the value of physician services

Yan Xu healthy debate blogger

In 1987, a high-profile and unpopular doctors’ strike over reimbursement shook the profession, leading to the creation of CanMEDS roles framework studied by every Canadian medical student. 18 years later, income is again the focal point in the latest negotiations between the Ontario Medical Association and the provincial government. As former Chief Justice Warren Winkler

Hospitals must do more to help late-career docs transition to retirement

Mamta Gautam and Chris Caruthers

Unemployed youth is a worldwide problem.  This problem is creeping into medicine and affecting our new doctors too.  In recent years, there have been discussions about the lack of physicians in Canada. Much of this has been based on anecdotal and reported evidence of unmet health care needs of Canadians including long waiting lists and

Should doctors be charging disadvantaged patients for sick notes?

Can’t you do something, Judge? This was the question I was asked in Drug Treatment Court last week. Unfortunately, my answer was “I tried. But I can’t seem to get these doctors to change!” The issue was doctors charging their patients for one line notes stating they had been ill and had been seen in