health Archives

Innovative Approach to Medical Training

A visionary Canadian physician believes three new medical schools opening in Canada will flip the country’s medical training model on its head to focus more on family medicine. “It takes a community to raise a physician,” said Dr. Roger Strasser, interim dean of the new Simon Fraser University Medical School and founding dean of the Northern Ontario School of…

Drug Use Study Conducted in qathet Region

A study of people who use drugs conducted in the qathet region found a variety of negative consequences, likening the situation for drug users to living in a goldfish bowl. Dr. Geoff Bardwell, the study’s lead, who is affiliated with BC Centre on Substance Use, and is also an assistant professor in the school of…

BC Town Fighting to Recruit Family Doctors

Kootenay community of Creston has its own professional headhunter to find physicians Dr. Nerine Kleinhans came to Creston, B.C., from Saskatchewan. She says the town has had a successful recruiting push, but there are still too few family physicians to go around. (Dan Caverly/CBC News) Whoever said an apple a day keeps the doctor away…

How to Encourage More Family Doctors

A commentary by a family doctor in Saanich: Never, in my 20 years of practice in B.C., have I seen family medicine in crisis as it is now. Trust me, it is not a new issue. Dr. Jennifer Lush I am beginning to think I know how the dinosaurs felt, watching the comet hurtle towards…

Rural-Urban Inequities in Palliative Care

Many rural communities have few or no palliative care beds. And as financial burdens increase, some health authorities are agreeing to staff new beds only if the local community pays for the design and building costs of new palliative care facilities. When built, residential hospice palliative care programs have often been at least 50% funded…

Yarmouth Organizations Team Up to Tackle Shortage of Doctors, Housing

A success story posted by Preston Mulligan of CBC Nova Scotia tells about how the housing shortage in Nova Scotia has created another hurdle in the struggle to attract doctors, but the business community in Yarmouth thinks it may have come up with a solution. Read More…

BC Rural Health Hub Pilot Is a Go

If Covid has taught us anything, it’s that we’re all in this together. And that what we know — and think we know — matters. This places a tremendous importance on communications. Not simply top-down, with information flowing from leaders and decision makers to citizens, but the other way ’round as well. This is called civic…

How can rural community-engaged health services planning affect sustainable health care system changes?

How can rural community-engaged health services planning affect sustainable health care system changes? That’s the question posed in a “pre-print” process description and qualitative analysis of data from the Rural Coordination Centre of British Columbia’s Rural Site Visits Project (SV Project), authored by C. Stuart Johnston, Rural Co-ordination Centre of BC (RCCBC), RCCBC’s Erika Belanger…

Community Paramedicine in rural BC, what it is & why it happened — interviews with Nancy Kotani & Amy Poll

BC’s Community Paramedicine Program, the first of its kind in Canada, provides rural residents with access to information and care previously lacking in many small, remote communities. Nancy Kotani, former Chief Transformation Officer for British Columbia Emergency Health Services, led the development and implementation of BC’s Community Paramedic project, the first province-wide initiative of its…

Healthy People, Healthy Communities — Mount Waddington Health Network

More than ever, rural/remote communities and First Nations across BC are grappling with serious health & wellness challenges. That is certainly the case in the sparsely populated Regional District of Mt Waddington. Through a series of conversations during the Island Health strategic planning consultation process in 2005, and a subsequent community and multi-stakeholder dialogue the year after, a community-driven mechanism and…