If challenging health inequities requires questioning structures of power, then this must sit at the centre of the work of all physicians.
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De-centring medical expertise means fostering skillsets that reduce disparities in health outcomes. Medical expertise alone is great for those with social privilege, but not enough for the rest.
This 15th-century medical manuscript shows different colors of urine alongside the ailments they signify.
Cambridge University Library
Meg Leja, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Your doctor’s MD emerged from the Dark Ages, where practicing rational “human medicine” was seen as an expression of faith and maintaining one’s health a religious duty.
A program offers training and education specifically on family medicine from the start of medical school, while bypassing administrative hurdles to residency.
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Education has a role to play in addressing the shortage of family doctors. A new program is designed specifically for comprehensive, community-based family practice.
Volunteering for global health experience is a common way of gaining clinical observation experiences for medical school applicants. This, and other opportunities to get close to the practice of medicine, also have unintended consequences.
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A winning medical school application requires stories about observing clinical care. But applicants’ quests to get clinical experiences have unintended and surprisingly far-reaching consequences.
Expectations of prejudice and discrimination can lead LGBTQ+ patients to avoid seeking health care.
Nadzeya Haroshka/iStock via Getty Images
Though some LGBTQ+ health care providers may try to separate their personal and professional identities, the prejudice they experience highlights their queerness in the clinic.
The unfolding crisis will only worsen the situation in Tigray.
Eduardo Soteras/AFP via Getty Images
The development of an immersive mobile phone application for university anatomy students offers insights into the future of online learning.
A medical worker looks through the debris of a medical lab in Port-au-Prince, Haiti following an earthquake in January 2010.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
The unique skills of Canadian health-care workers with international disaster experience could be a valuable resource during domestic emergencies.
OxyContin, an opioid drug heavily marketed by Purdue Pharma, is associated with billions of dollars of health-care costs in Canada related to the opioid crisis.
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The Purdue Pharma settlement is paltry compared to costs of the opioid crisis. Without major changes to pharma industry regulation, there is little reason to think a similar crisis won’t occur again.
Very few medical societies have public policies about how to deal with their interactions with companies.
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Voluntary medical societies have important roles in professional education and advocacy for doctors and patients, but there is need for transparency about relationships with pharma and health industry.
Health sciences education needs to be updated to include training in technology.
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There are growing applications of artificial intelligence in health sciences education. Students and practitioners need to be educated on using these technologies and made aware of their implications.
Going beyond window dressing is crticial in promoting equitable medical education.
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Medical schools need long-term equity planning and built-in accountability measures in order to help realize a larger vision of anti-racist and inclusive health care.
Around two in every 100 people have sex characteristics between the male-female binary definitions. Training for doctors and other health workers needs to reflect this.
Paramedics walk gurneys back to a multi-patient transport bus at Kingston General Hospital on April 30 after dropping off COVID-19 patients from the Toronto area.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg
The need to transfer 2,500 COVID-19 patients around Ontario, and bring in extra doctors from other provinces, exposes two fallacies about Canada’s health-care system.
Medical education needs to include understanding how genetic conditions can occur.
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Removing social medicine from the education of medical students would be to their detriment - as well as their future patients.
Emergency medical technicians bring a patient into Wyckoff Hospital in the Borough of Brooklyn on April 6, 2020 in New York.
Bryna R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images.
While African Americans account for about 14% of the US population, they have accounted for about 60% of deaths from the virus. Several physicians offer an idea they think could help.
Medical school efforts to cultivate good wellness practices and adaptive coping skills in medical students may offer an effective long-term solution to physician burnout.
Clinical research has established exercise as a safe and effective intervention to counteract the adverse physical and psychological effects of cancer and its treatment. The Clinical Oncology Society of Australia is the first to recommend exercise as part of regular cancer care.
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