Shayna Bejaimal

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3504 Contributions
by Jamaica Cass

Canada’s new standards on anti-Indigenous racism in health care must be enforced

On Dec. 9, 2021, Heather Winterstein, a 24-year-old Cayuga woman, went to the emergency department in St. Catharines, Ont., with severe back pain, was sent home with Tylenol and returned by ambulance the following day. After waiting more than two hours, she collapsed and died of septic shock. At the coroner’s inquest, clinicians testified they had not known she was Indigenous. The inquest issued 68 recommendations addressing cultural safety, clinical assessment and emergency department procedures.
by Ediriweera Desapriya Jaana Rodrigo Farrah Labadie Rehan Sineth Thilakaratne Peter Tiu Jayatilake Herath

Riding the risk: The unintended consequences of blanket e-bike bans

The e-bike panic has the shape of a moral emergency. The evidence doesn't match. City councils from London to New York to right here in Metro Vancouver are moving to ban e-bikes and e-scooters from sidewalks, citing pedestrian danger. It's an easy vote; nobody wants to be the councillors who "didn't do anything" after an elderly resident gets knocked down. But we spent the past several weeks doing what we should always do before legislating fear: checking what the best evidence says.
by Tania Kazi

Ontario doctors ‘discouraged’ as hundreds receive warning letters on high-volume billings

The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) warns that Ministry of Health letters received by hundred of physicians will have a “chilling effect” on doctors’ willingness to work additional hours.
by Sandra Sirrs Craig Mitton

Patients with rare diseases in the media – the danger of only hearing one side of the story

The Canadian Medical Association has published suggestions to help patients avoid inadvertently sharing incorrect information, an urgent issue considering 62 per cent of Canadians were exposed to health misinformation in 2025, according to its tracking study.
by Andrew D. Brown

The treatable cause of chronic pelvic pain that Canadian medicine keeps missing

The story I hear in my clinic doesn’t change much. A woman in her 30s or 40s has lived with pelvic pain for years. A dull ache, worse by evening, worse after standing all day at work, sometimes worse after intercourse. She has seen her family doctor, a gynecologist, sometimes two. She has had ultrasounds read as normal, often a laparoscopy that found nothing. Somewhere along the way, someone suggested the pain might be stress or “all in her head.”
by Emily Zhang

PMOS and early adversity: Why schools belong in the health conversation

Polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), formerly known as polycystic ovary syndrome, affects millions of women worldwide and is one of the most common endocrine disorders among young women. Its roots, however, may begin far earlier than most people realize.
by Dineli Fernando

‘We’re going to have the haves and have nots’: Concerns grow over Alberta’s referendum results on health care, education

Though limits and fees for access to health care, education and other social services by the province’s 279,500 non-permanent residents narrowly won support in Alberta’s recent referendum, the provincial government is widely expected to enact the changes – mostly because it tried to do something similar last winter.
by Tara Moroz

Canada regulates health-product claims. But what does ‘science-backed’ actually mean?

“Science-backed.” “Clinically proven.” “Clinically studied.” I see phrases like these constantly in advertising for supplements and other consumer health products. They are meant to sound reassuring because they seem to answer an important question before we even ask it: Does this product actually work?
by Raphael Hofstein Susan Marlin

Canada can win the race for clinical trials – if we keep up our momentum

A recent Healthy Debate article sounded an important alarm about the state of Canada’s clinical trials competitiveness and highlighted key barriers holding us back in the global race for industry investment. As someone who has spent much of my career working to strengthen Canada’s life sciences and innovation sector, I am deeply troubled by the data shared in that article signaling a decline in industry investment in clinical trials in Canada. But I am equally encouraged by the progress now underway, and by what it tells us about Canada’s ability to compete.
by Shawn Fisk AnneMarie Churchill

Substance use health: A different starting point

For decades, Canada gradually shifted its thinking, and its language, from mental illness to mental health. That evolution was about much more than terminology. It broadened the conversation beyond diagnosis and treatment to include prevention, wellbeing, resilience and the conditions that help people thrive.
by Alina Jaffer

Looksmaxxing: A ‘perfect storm that can result in lots of mental and physical health issues’

At 14 years old, Braden Peters was ready to ascend. He was fed up with his round face, acne breakouts and shrimpy build and simply waiting for puberty was not going to cut it. When the pandemic rolled around, his opportunity for action struck.
by Kirk Corkery

Practice streams: Efficiency or a trap?

The news from the recently released Canadian Institute for Health Information report on emergency department (ED) congestion is not new. Nor is the news from the survey by the Ontario Medical Association on ED congestion.
by Doug McGregor

We need local solutions to ease hospital overcrowding

Over the past dozen years, every health system in the Western world has moved from struggling with capacity issues to becoming nearly overwhelmed. This is no less true for Canada – and our shifting demographics to a more aged population will exacerbate the capacity issue.
by Elyse Lackie

We know how to prevent one of the deadliest cancers affecting women. Why aren’t we doing more of it?

When it comes to cancer prevention, we often imagine breakthrough drugs, expensive technology or years of scientific discovery. But one of the most promising ways to prevent ovarian cancer is already here. It's simple, safe, takes just a few extra minutes in the operating room, and has the potential to save thousands of lives. So why aren't we doing more of it?
by Brodie Ramin

You think you know about drugs in the Netherlands. You’re probably wrong

A man in a Rotterdam clinic placed a large dose of pharmaceutical-grade heroin on a piece of foil, heated it from underneath and inhaled the vapour through a tube. I stood a few feet away, behind a glass wall, watching.
by Gabriel Fabreau Annalee Coakley Lorian Hardcastle

Alberta scapegoating temporary residents in its referendum

We are clinicians and health system researchers. Through both our clinical and academic work, we bear witness to a health system that is under great pressure, with more sick patients and fewer hospital beds and resources to meet their needs.
by Eugene Litvak

How to spend money and make emergency overcrowding worse

Canada's emergency departments (EDs) had no summer reprieve. In July, Global News reported that Montreal EDs were operating above 200 per cent capacity. In British Columbia, CityNews reported eight overnight interruptions at Mission Memorial's ED in two weeks because of physician shortages. By August, 100 Mile House had recorded its 36th ED closure of 2026, with patients directed to a hospital 95 kilometers away.
by Mohammad Karamouzian Dr. Thomas Kerr

Canada has no shortage of ideas for the overdose crisis. It has a follow-through problem

Ten years after British Columbia declared toxic drugs a public health emergency, Canada is still struggling to turn promising responses into lasting interventions that save lives.
by Dr. Vivien Brown

RSV protection has changed. Our conversations need to change, too

Few things are more frightening for a parent than watching a baby struggle to breathe. A child who seemed well suddenly has difficulty feeding, becomes exhausted or needs hospital care. For families, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, can mean anxious hours in an emergency department and days at a hospital bedside.

by Dr. Bettina Hamelin Michelle McLean

Canada is losing the race for clinical trials – and patients are paying the price

Canada has long punched above its weight in clinical trial activity: the rigorous, multi-stage research studies that give Canadians early access to breakthrough treatments. For years, we’ve led the G7 in clinical trials per capita – a point of national pride – but that advantage is slipping away, and fast.

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