General Practice/Family Medicine

The country has struggled to stem the spread of the coronavirus, which some experts say could spread more broadly during cold weather when people spend more time indoors.

At this week's Ottawa Board of Health meeting, Dr. Vera Etches said the goal of the new approach she's suggesting would be the same, namely minimizing hospitalizations and deaths, as well as societal disruption.

The letter, signed by 200 medical doctors and scientists, said the pandemic is spiraling out of control in Manitoba because case numbers have been rising and outbreaks have been occurring at long-term care homes.

Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth said shortages of the vaccine are symptomatic of a much bigger problem and are causing her to worry about the eventual rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Who would have thought that it might be good to talk about yourself in the third person? As if you weren’t you, but him? As if you weren’t actually there, and anyway, you didn’t want yourself to find out you were talking about him in case it seemed like, well, gossip? I mean, only royalty, or the personality-disordered, are able to talk like that without somebody phoning the police.

I get to thinking there's at least an opportunity, if not an explicit purpose, in our trajectory toward senescence. On bad days, it freaks me out and I enter my default existentialism that seems to have coloured most of my life, from frantically saving the dying insects on the surface of my childhood pool to contemplating the spirited air that must surround the hallways of our local hospice and its quiet lakeside dock.

We’ve been getting by with virtual care, and during the pandemic, it may be the best option possible given the many constraints we are facing. But we need to recognize and value the relational effort that makes virtual care function. Ultimately, family medicine is built on relationships. It's relationships, in the clinic and in our communities that will get us through this pandemic.

Proposed legislation to amend Canada’s law on medical assistance in dying goes against the nature of medicine, which is to heal patients and alleviate suffering, says Dr. Ramona Coelho, a family physician in London, Ont. Dr. Coelho is among a group of physicians who wrote an open letter opposing Bill C-7. More than 800 Canadian doctors have now signed the letter.