How to Become an Osteopath in Canada: Complete Career Guide

 If you’re interested in healthcare and enjoy helping others feel better, becoming an osteopath might be a great career for you! Osteopaths are healthcare professionals who focus on treating the body’s muscles, bones, and joints. They use a hands-on approach to help relieve pain and improve overall health. This guide

Be careful, Canada — lessons from the Irish healthcare system

 Be careful what you wish for, Canada. One way or the other, Canadian courts are about to take some key decisions about the role of private financing and practice in your healthcare system; the on-going Cambie trial in British Columbia is just the latest attempt to overturn fundamental components of

Pretty damn crazy!

 “Hey mom, I just can’t do it anymore! . . . It’s over! . . . He’s out and I’m a mess!” “Can I crash with you while I sort myself out?” That desperate call came to my friend Leah, about one year ago. “Another one bites the dust!” she

When the doctor says sorry

 By Paul G. Thomas My introduction to the complex and emotional world of adverse events in healthcare occurred in 2001 when I chaired a committee to review an inquest report into the tragic deaths of twelve infants in a paediatric surgery program in Manitoba. Justice Murray Sinclair who conducted the

What you need to know about prescription opioids

 You were playing some pick-up hockey with friends and slipped and broke your leg. Or you were running across the street, tripped over the curb and fractured your elbow. Or maybe you experience overwhelming pain from a chronic medical condition and your healthcare provider feels opioids may help manage your

Healthcare, Poverty, and Education are Closely Linked – How Do We Move Forward?

 By David Wine According to Dr. Charles (Chuck) Basch, author of Healthier Students Are Better Learners, health issues, which disproportionately plague low-income urban minority youth, play a major role in limiting students motivation and ability to learn. It is estimated that 800 million people are spending at least 10 percent of their household

Universal Health Care – Chapter 2 – National Pharmacare: Canadian Health Coalition

 As Canadians, we tend to be rather proud of our public healthcare system, scoffing at our Southern neighbor’s patchwork solutions and their latest president’s attempt to overturn the Affordable Care Act. However, the system we so often take for granted hasn’t been around for very long, and its developing stages

Why Private Health Insurance Coverage in Canada Needs a Review

 Last week, the media carried a story about a nine-year-old boy in New Brunswick who was denied private health coverage because of his weight (at 5 foot 2 inches and 135 pounds).  His family were shocked – as were many reading the story – that a child could be denied

Opioid Crisis Should Be Top of Federal Health Agenda

 Hundreds of codeine tablets stolen from the medicine cabinet of an elderly person living alone in a rural community.  Hydromorphone tablets being distributed at weddings and high school parties. Fentanyl patches being cut up and sold for a profit on the street.  This is the reality of the opioid crisis

British Columbia’s Failed Healthcare Experiment

 Paying Doctors More Did Not Improve Primary Care – and Cost the Province Hundreds of Millions of Dollars Our first point of contact with the health system – often referred to as ‘primary care’ – should result in prompt and efficient care for our general health concerns, and coordinate our

New Health Accord Should Reject Per Capita Funding Model – and Consider Frailty Instead

 Health Minister Jane Philpott has promised a new Health Accord to be finalized over the coming year. When the previous Health Accord expired in 2014, the Harper government unilaterally established a new funding model for federal health transfer payments to the provinces and territories based on an equal per capita

Albertans Must Get Inventive in Healthcare as Price of Oil Slides Further

 As world oil prices and the Canadian dollar slide perilously, Albertans must become more inventive and rigorous in managing our costs – and our expectations – especially in high-cost areas like infrastructure, education and health care. Health care is the biggest challenge. We cannot turn off the population’s health care

What Should be Covered by our Publicly Funded Healthcare System?

 Patients and doctors need to learn the difference between ‘need’ and ‘want.’ All across Canada provincial governments are grappling with ever growing healthcare demands in the face of shrinking resources.  Our enviable publicly funded health system is now well into a downward spiral of unenviable disrepair.  As patients are becoming

Rising Rates of Kidney Failure Signal Need for Public Health Strategy

 As many as 40 thousand people in Canada are affected by kidney failure – a problem that is increasing across the country, with significant consequences for our health system.   A report released this month from the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy projects an increase of 68 per cent in

Three Things the Federal Government Can Do to Improve the Registered Disability Savings Plan

 Many of us in the disability community were pleasantly surprised when the Liberal party promised to create a National Disabilities Act that would safeguard disability rights, reduce systemic barriers and establish a foundation of opportunity for those affected by disability.  Canada is an outlier among developed nations for not having

We Need Federal Leadership on Pharmaceutical Drug Coverage

 More than 300 health academics and health professional sign letter to Prime Minister Trudeau on the need for federal leadership on pharmaceutical drug coverage (Toronto and Vancouver) -- Every developed country with a universal healthcare system provides universal coverage of prescription drugs…except Canada. The problems associated with Canada's incomplete patchwork

Dear Health Minister Philpott — We Need Leadership In Medicare Restored

 Dear Minister Philpott, It is fantastic news that as a family doctor you are our next federal health minister.  You will know very well that our healthcare system shows its age.  Born in the middle of the 20th century, its primary focus on doctors and hospitals is outmoded as technology

Many Patients with Chronic Health Conditions Also Have Mental Health Issues that Go Undiagnosed and Untreated

 We need to better integrate physical and mental health services Our health system often divides mental health from physical health into distinct silos of care and treatment, yet no such mind-body duality exists in actual patients.  Many individuals with chronic health conditions simultaneously experience mental health issues -- and the

Catastrophic pharmacare is a catastrophe

 Why the provinces don’t need $3 billion in federal tax dollars for flawed prescription drug policies Last week, the CD Howe Institute called on Ottawa to give provinces nearly $3-billion to establish national standards for catastrophic drug coverage and to mandate a system of transparent price negotiations with pharmaceutical drug

Health Systems Around the World

 By Kathleen O’Grady Comparing the performance of health systems around the world just got a little easier. One morning, the media headline pronounces Canada’s health system should model that found in the Netherlands; the next week, we should follow Germany’s example, and yet another says Australia is leading the pack.

What I didn’t learn in medical school

 Sometimes doctors can’t fix what makes their patients sick in the first place. I began medical school optimistic about what becoming a physician meant I could do for my future patients. Naively, I presumed my career would involve treating patients’ illnesses so they could return to lead full and fulfilling

Response to Refugee Crisis Must Include Expanding Refugee Healthcare

 The haunting image of Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body lying face down on a Turkish beach, and the subsequent revelation of the Kurdi family’s intention to seek asylum in Canada, have prompted many Canadians to ask what we can do as a country to help Syrian refugees. So far, our search

Can Wait Times for Hip Replacements in Canada be Shortened?

 Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.  I spent my life teaching actuarial science at a university. As a result, I calculated lots of numbers:  averages, expected values, variances. But, they were only numbers. What I didn’t see was the individual human story behind each calculation. But now that I am the

The Digital Expert Will See You Now

 Why doctors and digital experts should work together to improve patient health  As a family doctor, I have seen a dramatic shift in the range of people I work alongside every day – all for the better. When I was in training, most family doctors worked only with other family doctors and

Three Things Everyone Should Know About Autism in Canada

 Canadian governments have done little to address the crisis faced by autism families across the country. This sentiment was true in 2007 when it was put forward in the cross-party Senate report on the state of funding for the treatment of autism in Canada, aptly titled, Pay Now or Pay