Lived Experience

Beyond the signature: Is consent truly informed?

Moving forward, making informed consent truly informed – rooted in both equity and accessibility –  needs to be a priority, not just an ideal.

Healing the healers: Servant leadership and moral injury

In medicine, service and skill are not opposing forces. They’re inseparable. One without the other leads to harm. Together, service and skills just might help us heal.

Approved but denied: Canadians with neuromuscular diseases face unequal access to treatment

We are told health care in Canada is equal for everyone. But it is not. Particularly for patients with neuromuscular diseases, what you get depends on where you live.

‘Disability’ glaringly absent from federal cabinet portfolios

On May 13, Prime Minister Carney announced his new cabinet of 28 cabinet ministers and 10 secretaries of states, yet incredibly left Canadians with disabilities without any overt representation.

When care doesn’t translate

For South Asian communities, improved care means earlier screening, culturally relevant guidance and meaningful language access. Without these changes, we risk continuing a pattern of preventable harm.

How to keep pushing forward: Lessons learned as CMA president

"The CMA presidency has been one of the most challenging, and humbling, roles of my career, but also one of the most rewarding and inspiring. These lessons are a call to action."

‘This Will Make You a Better Doctor’

As medical trainees, we spend years learning to care for patients. But absolutely nothing prepared me to be a doctor better than being a patient.

Licence to kill: The pandemic on our roads

Many vehicular deaths are preventable. Traffic violence happens frequently but we don’t take these incidents seriously, judicially, socially nor traffic engineering-wise.

Bridging gaps in care: Reimagining Ontario’s health system for immigrants and refugees

It's time to reimagine a health-care system that truly works for everyone, especially those at the intersection of social and clinical disadvantage.

It’s not just the measles . . .

Many have forgotten how serious infections from Measules, Mumps, Rubella and Varicella can be because we have not seen them for many years. I am reminded every day by my mumps-induced deafness.

Report reveals ‘alarming trend’ of private staffing agencies in Ontario hospitals

New report reveals growth in government funding on Ontario’s public hospital systems has been significantly outpaced by spending on private staffing agencies.

Breathing for both of us

I walked into the obstetrics unit – 36 weeks pregnant, out of breath and scared. I had been here before, but this time was different.

HPV vaccination more than just women’s health issue

Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination historically has been framed as a women’s health topic, but a gender-neutral approach to prevention may boost health benefits for both females and males.

‘I want to pat dogs until I die’: End-of-life planning should be more than just Living Wills

Flipping the script on Advance Care Planning doesn’t mean I don’t agree with it. But what my approach has done is to take note of what makes up a “good day” and try to incorporate as many as possible.

LifeLabs strike highlights risks of foreign ownership in Canadian health care

The months-long strike at British Columbia’s LifeLabs has raised questions about foreign ownership of medical services and Canadians’ health data.

My birth sex is part of my medical history; it should be as private as the rest of my medical history

Insisting on primary birth sex identification for trans people does little to improve the health of trans and gender diverse persons; it merely exchanges one theoretical set of adverse health care outcomes for others that are definite and far more impactful.

Trade war yet another blow to patient care in Canada

The Trump administration’s trade war is sowing chaos and uncertainty around the world. Its effects on Canada's health-care system are no exception.

Vaccine safety, politics and the nocebo effect

The nocebo effect has an important role to play in vaccine uptake and safety. We must vigorously counter the misinformation and political spin that helps to fuel the accelerating vaccine concern vortex.

Decades after it was declared eliminated, I fear the heartbreaking, avoidable consequences of measles

Fatal encephalitis from measles technically and biologically could be abolished as a human disease. Yet, I fear the downstream consequences of what the anti-vaccine movement could bring.

Public health is dead. As artists, we share some of the responsibility

As a writer who lived with Long Covid for two years, today more than ever, I think it is essential for artists to acknowledge and challenge a pandemic-shaped cultural vacuum.