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Doctors have highlighted potential problems with the breathing system filters used in anaesthesia, including intensive care units, after demonstrating that they don't provide protection from harmful bacteria and yeast when they become wet.

Research in the July issue of Anaesthesia has shown that when they were wet, six commonly available filters allowed substantial passage of Candida albicans (a yeast infection linked to a range of chronic illnesses) and coagulase-negative staphylococci (a common hospital-acquired bacterial infection).

The Canadian health care system barely measures up to international standards according to a new study by The Commonwealth Fund. Why do we have such a low health care ranking compared to other industrialized nations? The fact that many Canadians do not have a primary care doctor, and our "slow adoption of integrated information technology systems for patient records." Giuseppe Valiante from Canwest News Service June 25, 2010 reports:

The Commonwealth Fund studied the health-care systems of Canada, the U.S., Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the U.K., and found that only the American system ranks lower than Canada's.

Carly Weeks, From Friday's Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Jun. 17, 2010 10:50PM EDT, highlights the finding of a recent study that demonstrates "more than 17,000 young patients endured excessive wait times in 2009".

Thousands of Canadian children experience unacceptably long wait times for surgical procedures, which put them at risk of developing lifelong health problems, a new report says.

In 2009, more than 17,000 children were not treated within time frames deemed acceptable by physicians, an annual report released by the Wait Time Alliance on Thursday shows. The report exposes new depths to Canada’s chronic deficiencies in managing wait times for common health procedures.

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In a recent news article on Healthzone.ca, Toronto Star reporter Teresa Boyle wonders whether or not doctors should be able to avoid disciplinary action by quietly retiring. Malpractice lawyer Paul Harte asks, “what message does it send when these doctors are allowed to retire from the profession without any adverse consequences?”

The College of Physicians and Surgeons is coming under fire for dropping investigations in at least four separate cases where doctors agreed not to practise again rather than face disciplinary action.

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Study queries the right to information in every case.

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Initiative could easily be replicated in other residential care settings.

Nursing home residents who used videoconferencing to keep in touch with family members felt it enriched their lives, according to a study in the June issue of the Journal of Clinical Nursing.

Thirty-four residents from ten nursing homes took part in the study. The 18 women and 16 men had an average age of 75.

All of them said the experience enriched their lives, just under two-thirds said it was the second-best option to family visiting and a third said it gave them a true picture of family life.

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Despite the best intentions, a patient's perspective often gets lost in the complicated path their healthcare can take.

Our experts examine how and why healthcare services can overlook the patient perspective, and present innovations that have successfully integrated the patient into the healthcare team.

Facilitator: Paddy Moore, CHSRF
Researcher: Carole Orchard, University of Western Ontario Decision-maker:
Margaret Keatings, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto

Wednesday, June 23, 2010
2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. EDT

Dagmar Frias never really got the hang of her asthma medications. She would use an inhaler whenever she started wheezing, but the drugs she was supposed to take every day remained in her dresser drawer, untouched.

Then late last year, her 1-year-old daughter, Amelia Marquez, had a severe asthma attack that put her in the hospital for five days. Since then, Ms. Frias has become something of an expert on managing the disease.

She is scrupulous about giving Amelia her medications three times a day, and has learned to watch for signs of an imminent attack, like the heavy breathing and the telltale cough, and the way Amelia scrunches up her shoulders when she’s short of breath. Ms. Frias said she has been taking her own medicines and has had no new asthma attacks.