Does Halifax get its own Mayo Clinic?

Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil's remonstrations in the legislature this month condemning a year-old memo from some Capital District Health Authority physicians proposing a new, doctor-driven, private-public, "Mayo Clinic-like" hospital facility in metro were an emblematic example of the sort of backward, stick-in-the-mud attitudes and reactionary, tunnel-vision thinking that keep Nova Scotia an underachieving backwater.

McNeil trotted out the customary boilerplate about defending the sacrosanct public health care system from the evils of profit motive or market accountability, trotting out the old FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) about privatization of health care delivery leading to (horrors!) - two-tiered health care, with NDP leader Darrell Dexter chiming in with his labour-union constituency's pet trope about private hospitals and clinics supposedly luring doctors and nurses away from the public system.

The 2006 memo, reportedly authored and signed by Capital Health surgeon Robert Stone, lays out a concept for clinics or centres that "should not be staffed by 'unionized' personnel

It would focus on providing endoscopy; breast health services; prostate therapy; various other diagnostics; orthopedic surgery, other same-day surgeries, and executive preventive health - all procedures that do not require the facilities of a fully-equipped and staffed, acute-care surgical hospital.
For which there is a strong demand that isn't being met in a timely fashion by the current public system, and which helps keep waiting lists long for other, more complex surgeries and treatments.

It's just, plain inefficient and a misuse of scarce resources.

Read the full story here

Two great stories about Canadian health care professionals

Here are two interesting stories I came across, about two Canadian health care professionals who have been active elsewhere in the world to share knowledge with their local health care professional counterparts.

Both are on their own, unique mission:

The first is Dr. Laura Louie, a naturopathic doctor from Vancouver, who set up an acupuncture clinic for HIV infected people in Thailand.

"It's Tuesday morning and Louie is only a few days off the plane from Canada when she arrives at the Mae On Clinic, bright and early so she can consult with head nurse Unchalee Pultajuk before the patients start arriving for the weekly HIV-acupuncture clinic."

"........Patients move from the acupuncture beds to a chair where a Tui Na massage completes their treatment. The traditional Chinese massage is done with bare hands -- "with healing, touch is so important"

The second is Dr. David Chaulk, a pediatrician from Alberta, who teaches Yemeni health care professionals the advanced knowledge from Canada and to help them catch-up.

“When I first arrived in Yemen and began teaching it was easy to have a feeling of superiority — for lack of a better word,” Chaulk said. “As Canadian physicians we have far better education, far superior training and more experience."

"..........You see two children to a bed, two patients with one intravenous infusion going to both patients and extremely malnourished, dehydrated and dying children that would be in intensive care units in Canada lying on a bed, being cared for primarily by the parents and with no monitoring equipment or any type of modern medical devices..........."

Enjoy reading the full stories (just click on their names)

Almost 80% of Canadians wary of Plastic Surgery

Almost eight out of ten Canadians would not have a face lift, droopy eyelids fixed or unwanted fat suctioned from their body, even if they could afford it.

This is the conclusion of the latest poll about plastic surgery, conducted in the wake of several high-profile cosmetic surgery deaths.

The Ipsos Reid survey for CanWest News Service and Global National found only 20 percent of 1,000 adults surveyed agreed with the statement, "If I had the means and ability, I'd have cosmetic surgery done."
Seventy-nine percent disagreed and one percent didn't know or refused to answer.)

Similar surveys in the United States suggest approval of such procedures is at an all-time high, with more than half of Americans in favour of surgical enhancement.

"I think that, with what's happened in the news in Canada, people here are a little bit more worried about plastic surgery," says Frank Lista, medical director and founder of the Plastic Surgery Clinic in Mississauga, Ontario, and past president of the Canadian Society of Aesthetic (Cosmetic) Plastic Surgery.

Last September, 32-year-old Krista Stryland, a real estate agent and mother of one, died in a hospital emergency room following a liposuction procedure performed by a family doctor who advertised as a cosmetic surgeon.

Stryland's death raised fresh alarms over untrained and unqualified doctors in Ontario performing cosmetic surgery and the increase in risky procedures being done in private "corner store" clinics.

Read the rest of the story here