Dr. Janet Kushner-Kow is the physician program director of elder care at Providence Health Care and division head of geriatric medicine at the University of British Columbia.
Researchers have found that belief in conspiracies and the psychological phenomenon of reactivity are strong cross-cultural predictors of vaccine hesitancy. But are these characteristics fixed traits?
Two significant trends in health care are at cross-purposes: the boom in digital devices that tackle diseases at the individual level, and the growing recognition of the importance of social determinants of health. Can these two trends be reconciled?
Could monoclonal antibody therapy help shore up health-care system capacity by stopping COVID-19 in its tracks among the unvaccinated and immunocompromised? A pilot program is hoping to do just that.
Health advocates are raising alarm that infants in Nunavut, and especially Inuit infants, face grave risks as a potent respiratory virus – deadlier than COVID-19 and influenza – re-emerges after a one-year hiatus. Health officials now fear serious outbreaks in Canada’s North.
Pediatric emergency departments are seeing record numbers of visits since some families can’t see their family doctors or go to walk-in clinics. More patients mean longer waits, hindering care for some children with emergency conditions.
Vaccines must be mandatory in all health-care settings in order to protect patients, protect health-care workers and prevent future health-care worker shortages. Furthermore, hospitals are temples of science, and we need to make decisions based on science – such as mandating vaccination.
Vaccine mandates will lead good health-care workers to be fired, thereby exacerbating systemic inequities – and all for a rationale that appeals to patient safety but which does not always stand up to scrutiny. We also can't allow vaccine mandates to send the message that we no longer need to use multiple complementary infection-control measures.
Vaccinations should be mandatory for all health-care workers because they will keep vulnerable patients safe. We know this from our experience successfully mandating vaccination among staff in long-term care. Furthermore, vaccine mandates should not be blamed for staff shortages in the health-care system.
Mandating COVID-19 vaccines amounts to a passive and insensitive infection-control measure that does not address the real drivers of COVID-19 infection. Moreover, it deviates from the core principles of public health, eroding trust between public health and those it serves.
When hospitals harm patients, patient-relations departments provide insincere apologies and resort to other tactics to shield hospitals from accountability. I experienced this while coping with medical errors my late dad suffered as a cancer patient.
We're only beginning to understand the "secondary losses" of the pandemic. The immediate future of health care will likely be defined by the appearance of illnesses that flourished among the forgotten, patients who were inadvertently neglected.
Despite data showing the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine for pregnant women, uptake is still lagging. Here are some of the reasons why.
As a 19-year-old with bipolar disorder, I waited eight hours in the ER for a doctor. My brain may not have been bleeding, but I felt like my brain was on fire. Here's what I learned about improving care for patients experiencing a mental health crisis.
Longer lives are one of the greatest achievements in medicine. Yet we see a diminished quality of life for many older adults, especially women, due to inequities institutionalized in health care. So how do we de-institutionalize these inequities?
A recent Ontario Medical Association reaffirmed that male doctors in Ontario are paid 13.5 per cent more per day than women, and it highlights where the issue is most acute: for example, in the supposedly gender-blind fee-for-service payment system.
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.
Some virologists hypothesize that Omicron and other variants of concern emerged after mutating within an immunosuppressed person. The solution, they say, is to get vaccines to under-vaccinated countries.
Food insecurity has increased during COVID-19, even as lots of food is wasted in Canada. MealCare is addressing both problems by diverting surplus food from grocery stores, cafeterias and caterers to homeless shelters, food banks and soup kitchens.
Global vaccine inequity is not just wrong, but also dangerous. As Omicron is showing us, we aren’t safe until we’re all safe. Here's how Canada can contribute to global vaccine equity now.