Healthcare

AV: What does our healthcare system do very well? Triage. My mom remarried a few years ago, and the gentleman she married has a heart condition and has ended up in emergency more than once. They [...]

It’s a little after 10 o’clock in the morning and Taylor feels like she’s climbing the walls. When her name is called and the door to Lethbridge’s supervised drug consumption site buzzes [...]

My 94-year-old mother and I are sitting in a southwest Calgary medical office and settling in to spend the day. It will be a long one but by the time we leave, my mother will have a new right eye [...]

Life is filled with surprises. So, on the day that I drove my brother, Olivier, to emergency to be treated for a psychotic episode, during that evening when we sat in emergency for nearly 12 [...]

A country that prides itself on its universal healthcare system has a glaring coverage gap: pharmaceutical drugs. As doctors and academics in this field, we see the consequences. Take, for [...]

It was the summer of 2015, and Hanne Schafer—a 65-year-old Calgarian psychologist who loved opera and camping and her husband of nine years—decided it was time. Over the previous two years, [...]

Just tell them we don’t have it here.” That’s what the nurse told me in Killam Hospital, an hour east of Camrose. I’d asked what would happen if a woman came into our ER asking for the [...]

An epic battle is underway in a Vancouver courtroom, with doctors, patients and experts clashing over how best to meet the healthcare needs of Canadians. Less visible—but nonetheless central to [...]

If you’re like most Canadians, you probably don’t care how your doctor gets paid as long as you receive the help you need and the government picks up the tab. But Dr. John Chmelicek thinks you [...]

The lights are hurting more than the knife. I’m on the operating table, with Dr. Bryce Ford looking down at me through a massive microscope, which is the source of those painfully bright lights. [...]