Montreal's two medical schools have thrown cold water on a proposal to fast-track the education of medical students to save money and help reduce the shortage of doctors.An editorial in the latest issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal recommends that the standard four-year curriculum be reduced by a year.But officials at both McGill University and the Université de Montréal argue the proposal doesn't make sense in Quebec because many students in the province enroll in medical... Read Full Story

Canada's health care system offers "excellent value for the money" says a British researcher who has studied preventable deaths in 19 industrialized nations.The study, to be released today in Health Affairs, looks at "amenable mortality", deaths that would not have occurred if effective health care had been available.Conditions that caused these deaths included bacterial infections, treatable cancers, diabetes, some cardiovascular disease and the complications of common surgical procedures... Read Full Story

Saskatchewan Health will be exploring the grey matter of many groups to create a seniors' care strategy.Health Minister Don McMorris wants to identify and address problems in current community-based care programs, from home care to facility care."The goal is to keep seniors at home as long as possible but we hear that there are some gaps in that process, so we want to ensure that those gaps are filled," he said. "We'll be starting to work with the regional health authorities because they... Read Full Story

Faced with an aging population requiring increasingly complex care, overwhelmed Canadian doctors are feeling more and more frustrated by their inability to properly serve their patients' health needs, a national survey of physicians reports. In the survey of more than 20,000 doctors and doctors-in-training from across the country, 75 per cent reported that inadequate funding of the health care system and an under-supply of physicians and other health professionals, along with paperwork and... Read Full Story

As part of building capacity at York Central Hospital in Richmond Hill, Ontario, a strategy was created to enhance the learning environment for staff, attract staff to the organization and reduce the significant turnover within the first year. To this end a dynamic mentorship program, the first of its kind in Canada, was created supported by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care inter-professional education initiative and York Central Hospital (YCH) Foundation. “The mentorship program... Read Full Story

Efforts to create a genetic map of Quebec begin in earnest this month as researchers start recruiting people willing to offer up their bodies' blueprints. The University of Montréal-driven project aims to sign up the first 400 people from Montreal, Monteregie and the Eastern Townships, with the aim of eventually collecting data on health and disease from just over 20,000 people. The government-funded project is expected to create one of the largest data and biobanks in Quebec and will be... Read Full Story

Despite evidence indicating seniors are being prescribed potentially dangerous drugs, Health Canada says it can't do anything more to make its warnings about these medications more effective. The department is responding to an investigation in December revealing that doctors continue to prescribe anti-psychotic drugs to seniors, despite Health Canada warnings in 2005 that the drugs increased the risk of heart attack, stroke and death. The analyzed sales data for the drugs indicated that... Read Full Story

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... Read Full Story

"She is a physician who has gone above and beyond the call of duty, especially in the advancement of the health of women of Prince Albert and northern Saskatche-wan ... I find it simply amazing that she delivered approximately 270 (babies) in Prince Albert this past year," Ajay Krishan, one of her nominators, wrote in a letter to The Prince Albert Kinsmen Club and the Daily Herald. Dr. Lalita Malhotra has won Canada's highest civic accolade and counts the 2007 Prince Albert Citizen of the... Read Full Story

A language battle is brewing at one of Winnipeg's leading medical institutions.Since October 14th, nursing jobs posted for the Woman and Child program at St. Boniface General Hospital list the ability to speak French as one of the qualifications.That has some nurses worried the ability to speak French is taking priority over skill and experience, possibly putting patient care at risk."They've started hiring people into positions and taking French language qualifications over top of nursing... Read Full Story