Training paramedics to provide home-based palliative care lets severely ill patients remain at home and takes pressure off emergency departments and the health system.
Research shows cardiac patients want to understand heart events, adopt heart-healthy diets, manage medications, recognize symptoms, control risk factors and engage in cardiac rehabilitation programs.
Patients with incurable cancer want to be informed about their disease and its treatment, but must also maintain hope. This inner conflict can affect how they process information about their prognosis.
The shortage of family doctors affects not only patients, but the entire health-care system. A strong primary care foundation increases average lifespan, improves overall health and reduces costs.
Each encounter that health-care students have with patients and families helps them understand real-world patient needs. That means all Canadians have a role in educating future health-care providers.
Bill C-7 has created ethical tensions between MAID providers and palliative care, between transparency and patient privacy, and between offering a dignified death rather than a dignified life.
People with long COVID report that their symptoms are dismissed or not treated seriously by health-care providers. This medical gaslighting not only prevents treatment but can cause stigma and shame.
Ambulance response times have not always met targets, but the alarming new pinch point in our health-care system is that there are no ambulances at all available to respond to calls.
Although chronic pain is recognized by scientists as a disease in its own right, it remains largely under-recognized, under-diagnosed and, above all, associated with numerous prejudices.
At the dawn of Medicare, Saskatchewan’s community co-op clinics pioneered team-based, holistic care. Now, with the health system in crisis 60 years later, it may be time to return to that care model.
Younger cancer patients have unique challenges, and resources often target older patients. Social media brings younger cancer patients together to share information, emotional support and hope.
Health researchers hope a new regulation requiring hospitals to post their prices will tame soaring health care costs, but compliance and standardization are hurdles.