I breathe a sigh of relief as the announcement system comes on after an 8-minute clinical encounter: “please begin patient feedback.” I especially enjoy this part of our weekly clinical skills session, and not only because it heralds the end of an encounter wherein I, as a medical student, nervously attempt to recall the many …
It’s been five years since my grandmother died, and I still remember how sterile, cold, and distant her hospital room felt, no matter my family’s loving efforts to make it look more like home. I still remember the guilt-feeling too, of having to work up the nerve to visit her there. You see, some days …
When I attended the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) conference in Boston recently, discussion swirled on the topics of unsustainable costs of care, doctors’ incentives under traditional payment models to order more tests and treatments, and the struggles of patients’ family members to avoid unwanted care at the end of life. That Sunday night, I was back at …
Modern health care systems emerged in the late 19th Century from the ascendance of scientific medicine. The major killers at the time of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur were infectious diseases such as anthrax, tuberculosis and typhoid fever. These scientists were among the first to identify the microorganisms that cause such disease and then to …
When a patient dies in the hospital, we go through a checklist that has become eerily mundane: Examine the patient to confirm the death. Notify the family, the senior doctor, the local organ bank, the admitting office, and (in some cases) the medical examiner. Fill out the report of death. Write a death note. Brace …
Every patient, young and old, who enters the hospital where I work needs to have a discussion with their physician about how far the medical team should go in attempting to revive them in the event that they stop breathing or their heart stops pumping. The results of this discussion are known as their ‘code …
“In Canada in health care we’re at a point where most hospitals accept the role of social media for branding and communication, but only the lead adopters are using it for patient engagement and for clinical use.” – Ann Fuller, public relations director, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) Call up the website home …
Last week, the governing council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) voted unanimously in favor of changing its bylaws to allow for public reporting of the results of inspections of Out-of-Hospital Premises, such as private colonoscopy and plastic surgery clinics. This change was made following reporting by the Toronto Star, which …
I worked in health care for 35 years and during that time firmly believed in the value of accreditation for hospitals. I worked hard to ensure the hospitals I was connected with over the years were accredited. I experienced the process from the point of view of a provider, but not a patient. When I look …
The Personal Health Navigator is available to all Canadian patients. Questions about your doctor, hospital or how to navigate the health care system can be sent to AskLisa@Sunnybrook.ca The Question: Is it the family physician’s job to gather test results and explain the outcome of those tests – blood tests, ultrasounds, X-rays and CT scans – and …
Denise Nauss credits the in-home support that she received from a team of health professionals for prolonging the life of her beloved mother, Joyce Mason, by almost two years. Mason, who suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), died in Halifax this past May at age 73. COPD is a long term, progressive lung disease, …
The other night, a patient gave me a piece of his mind. Mr. Q was a middle-aged man debilitated by days of nausea, vomiting and intractable belly pain. That morning, his wife finally convinced him to get medical attention and drove him to our emergency department. On arrival, he sat in a cubicle in the …
Just last week I heard about a situation that went something like this: A woman had a cardiac catheterization in a Toronto hospital. A professional attended the women while she was recovering from sedation and proceeded to read her a list of things she needed to know in order to care for herself. The professional …
Ontario Ombudsman André Marin’s bid for jurisdiction to investigate complaints about patients’ experiences at the province’s hospitals and long-term care facilities has support from a wide range of patient advocacy groups. Marin stresses that his counterparts in all the other provinces have jurisdiction to investigate these types of complaints, although the scope of their powers …
Health systems worldwide are challenged by the growing costs of health care and the increasing demand for chronic illness management within aging populations. Innovation has become central to the agendas of most health systems to overcome these challenges and achieve sustainability. A recent analysis of seven OECD comparator countries identified numerous learning opportunities for Canada. …
When I joined the Ambulatory Practice of the Future (APF) as a first-year resident, I learned that the primary care clinic had an open notes policy: whatever we wrote about our patients could be seen by our patients through a secure online portal. It was a startling departure from medicine’s tradition of records shrouded in …
An Ottawa area pilot project that facilitates electronic consultations between family physicians and specialists has proved so popular among doctors and administrators that its architects are finding ways to make it permanent. These consultations occur before an actual referral to a specialist is considered by the family doctor. “Doing referrals as a family doctor is one …
The governments of Canada and the United States have patient-oriented research initiatives underway, which share the goals of supporting research that will improve health care systems and directly benefit patients. However, the mandate, structure and funding of these initiatives differ significantly, with the United States accomplishing a great deal in a relatively short period of …
A number of Canadian hospitals have started publishing live emergency department wait times online in an effort to provide patients with expectations on how long they will have to wait to be seen for non-urgent issues. These efforts are all innovative pilot projects, but there is little evidence available on whether this information makes any …
In the internet age there is an unprecedented amount of information available to anyone with access to the web. In health care, this is slowly shifting power dynamics, with patients taking increased responsibility and ownership of their health. What needs to be done so a health care system built in the 20th century can address …