Education

Beyond pilot projects: Why Canada needs care pathways for chronic inflammatory diseases

At a recent Economic Club of Canada event, Scaling What Works: Advancing Healthcare Excellence Across Canada, two comments stayed with me long after discussion ended.

Refugee youth and the right to learn: An investment that pays dividends

More than 123 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced by war, violence and climate-related disasters between 2016-2025. Now, following sweeping United States policies, many high-income countries are restricting refugee access to asylum, education and work. Against this backdrop, last September we published the Halifax Declaration arguing for a different approach: one that recognizes displaced people not as passive aid recipients, but as partners in building resilient health, education and social systems.

Why aren’t we listening to the people who recover?

If we wanted to understand what it takes to win a Super Bowl, we definitely would be listening to what seven-time winner Tom Brady has to say. We also would listen to teams that lost. Their experiences matter, too. But it would seem strange to study who wins football championships without spending considerable time talking to the people who actually won them. To understand cancer survivorship, we listen not only to oncologists and researchers but also to people who have survived cancer and gone on to live healthy, rewarding and meaningful lives. So why is addiction recovery different?

Canada’s health-care workforce is growing. Teaching capacity is not

Lying in a cold operating room surrounded by the health-care team, I watched trainees gather around to observe my surgery. Their presence was anticipated, given the central role hospitals play in health‑professions education. Yet as I lay there, vulnerable and exposed, I felt less like a person and more like a teaching case.

Health-care AI should buy back learning time, not just documentation time

Canadian health care does not need another technology that simply changes the shape of administrative burden. It needs technology that gives clinicians and health-system professionals time back for professional development and clinical work.

Overcoming the insulin taboo

The insulin pen had been sitting on his kitchen table for months. The 46‑year‑old man, a retired Sri Lanka born chef living in the Toronto area, had survived oral cancer, pancreatitis and a lifetime of hard work. But nothing frightened him more than the small plastic pen meant to save his life. On a June morning, during a routine check after his jaw surgery, he finally confessed his fears.

When health advice becomes political identity

For years, we talked about health misinformation as if it were mainly a knowledge problem: patients encountering false claims online, doctors correcting them and the better information winning.

Canada promised to watch its doctors train. We never did. AI could change that

In 2017, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada launched Competence by Design, the most consequential reform of Canadian residency training in a generation. The premise was simple: we can define all the elements that a graduating physician should know or do in practice, and we should only graduate them when a supervisor has actually watched them do the work competently and safely. The framework broke training into discrete clinical tasks, such as managing a patient with chest pain, that a trainee must be observed performing before a supervisor signs off. Nearly a decade later, the architecture is in place. The observation is not.

Young people aren’t avoiding conversations about sexual health – they’re avoiding judgment

Youth are already talking about sexual health online every day. The question is whether trusted institutions are willing to meet them there – not with judgment, but with honesty, empathy and respect. 

Lifestyle medicine vs. wellness culture: Evidence-based preventative care should not be a luxury product

Evidence-based preventative care should not become a luxury product or a marketplace trend. It should remain a core part of accessible public health care.

Embracing disability consciousness: Elevating diverse voices in medical education

As health care is paying more attention to disability education in recent years, it’s important that when including disability voices, we ensure diversity of disabled voices as well.     

Shamed to death: How stigma, not science, is killing Canadians with lung cancer

Lung cancer screening should be available to everyone at risk, regardless of where they live or the source of their illness. 

Protecting nursing students: The need for placement site guidelines in smaller clinics

Clinical education is a regulated and mandatory component of professional entry-to-practice. Strengthening placement guidelines could help anticipate shifts in placement availability by promoting clearer expectations and safeguards.

The fabric of care: It is nurses who hold our health system together

If Canada hopes to strengthen its health-care system, we must recognize and support the profession that sustains it every day.

I am a new doctor; Ford is wrong about ‘basketweaving majors’

The Ontario Student Assistance Program is more than just taxpayer money. It is the people’s belief in the immense potential of every student to rise above their station and be of service to the public.

Assisted dying is changing medicine more than we realize

If Canada continues expanding assisted dying, it must answer hard questions. Are we expanding access to death faster than access to care? Are we ending lives prematurely when people could have flourished with adequate suicide prevention and support?

The cost of caring: Social worker well-being and fair compensation

As social workers we are often expected to put our needs last, while accepting an income that fails to reflect the true value of our work. We need to change the social work discourse and change the landscape in which we are expected to work.

Kevin’s story: My journey with my brother, dementia and Down Syndrome

Across the country, we talk about dementia more than we used to, but too often, conversations remain fragmented - and people with disabilities are rarely at the centre of planning.

‘Dangerous outcomes’: The limitations of BMI as a diagnostic tool

Researchers, clinicians and advocates have been raising concerns about the BMI, saying it is not a comprehensive indicator of health and using it can have disastrous results, especially for racialized populations.

Manitoba slashes private nursing agencies: The path forward or a policy stumble?

Last month, Manitoba took the bold step in cutting nearly all its private nursing agency contracts. Was it the right move? Experts weigh in.