Blogs

The headline for the July 29th New York Times article read “Scientists Seek to Rein in Diagnoses of Cancer.” The accompanying article discusses the fact that many diagnoses of cancer are of conditions that, though pre-malignant or not life-threatening, are labelled as cancer and frighten patients into seeking “what may be unneeded and potentially harmful treatments.”

WANTED: Patient & Family Advisors for a Hand Hygiene Working Group at Toronto's St. Joseph's Health Centre to help shape current and future hand hygiene practices, improvements and initiatives.

St. Joseph's is looking for people to participate in regular evaluation of the program’s activities and outcomes, make recommendations, and offer input – all from a patient/family perspective. To apply, you must be 18 and older and have had experience with its services over the last two years, either as a patient, family member or caregiver.

Most healthcare systems are working hard to exceed their patients’ expectations and understand that the long term benefits to the patient and organization are manifold. Click here to read which strategic objectives can lead to a state-of-the-art service model, and better healthcare experiences overall.

We are looking for an Administrative Assistant to join our team! Are you an experienced administrator? Would you be excited to join a growing organization? Are you passionate about patients and family caregivers having a role in healthcare? Check out the job posting here.

The paediatric bone marrow transplant team entered my 10 month old son’s isolation room for a second time one morning. It was supposed to be Anderson’s “day of rest” between chemotherapy and his transplant. As a physician, I knew something was wrong—busy doctors do not do rounds twice... Find the full article here.

Last week's Maclean's article Doctors, conflict of interest and evidence med schools are ignoring the problem looks at the first study of its kind that analyzes conflict of interest policies at medical schools across Canada.

Have you ever had trouble finding health and social services in your community that meet your needs? The People, Health Equity and Innovation (PHI) Group at the University Health Network is developing a web-based tool to help seniors, their family caregivers, and health professionals find health and social services in their communities.

On June 17th, we held an open meeting to discuss experiences of hospital-acquired infection, the frequency and causes of these infections, and what we, as healthcare consumers, can do to decrease the risks of readmission.The unfortunate reality is that hospital-acquired infections are estimated to cause 8,000 to 12,000 deaths a year in Canada, so as a group we decided to focus on patient stories to highlight gaps in patient safety. We compared hospital practices and policies surrounding patient engagement and infection control, and came to some surprising conclusions.