Catherine Varner is a Toronto emergency physician, clinical epidemiologist and freelance journalist. She is on the deputy editorial team at Healthy Debate.
Large, in-person medical conferences can be risky in the Omicron era. Yet, proponents say these risks can be mitigated, and resuming in-person learning and networking are necessary to advance medicine and support a profession at its breaking point.
As anti-vaxx protests continue in front of hospitals across Canada, emergency physicians are saying enough is enough and leaving their profession behind.
Representatives of Toronto Women in Emergency Medicine, a group of emergency physicians working in hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area, were asked to reflect on their experiences of the most recent wave and what health-care systems can do to survive the next one.
Emergency departments in southwestern Ontario are at a breaking point. Crowding has reached unprecedented – and dangerous – levels, forcing patients to wait close to 20 hours and leaving some regions without available ambulances.
Emergency departments are struggling to deal with staff shortages, and the violence that health-care workers face is a big reason why people are quitting the field. Doctors and nurses are calling for measures to curb the violence.