My prize for having the highest marks in my Grade 3 class at Joliette English School was a copy of the book Florence Nightingale by Jeannette Covert Nolan. At about the same time, my mother began to decide that I should become a nurse. Her sister was a nurse, as was her sister-in-law and my …
With everyone concerned about burnout lately, and since I wanted to write something to promote personal mental health for Bell Let’s Talk Day next week, I reread one of my favourite Harvard Business Review articles from 2013. I have been remembering this article lately and wondering how it might inform our discussion about burnout, so …
Last week, I worked more during the 16 hours I was on call that I had during the preceding day – or the following day for that matter. I was so tired that I almost fell asleep during one particularly contemplative portion of the art therapy session I was conducting. I fell into bed just …
It is forty years since I graduated from McGill Medical School in 1978. Forty-four years since I first walked into the Pine Avenue entrance of the McIntyre Medical Sciences Building. It was a bright, warm September morning. I remember that the auditorium was already dark when I entered, and steep-pitched. I took a seat on …
Every weekday at noon, I grab a cup of tea and a pile of charts and cozy up to my speaker phone. Thus prepared, I begin to call the family doctors who have referred patients to me. I speak with about 15 family doctors in the two hours between noon and 2 p.m., reviewing assessment …
Last week, I was annoyed by a few newspaper articles in which those persons using health care services were called “consumers”. I’ve had enough of that. I want the people using health care services to be called “patients” again. What is a “consumer”? My Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines “consumer” as “a person who purchases goods …
During all my years of practicing medicine, I have been close to research in the institutions where I worked. I have admired and assisted clinical researchers, but I had never felt inclined to join their ranks. When I became the Clinical Director of the Youth Program two years ago, however, that changed. With this new …
For the past nine months, I have been visiting my sister who is dying in Nova Scotia. This experience has truly sensitized me to the needs of those who need palliative care, and I now appreciate how much I will want to be able to control how and where my life ends. But this is …
An article that I read recently emphasized how long and how unsuccessfully women physicians have been struggling to improve their working conditions to the point where they might be able to find some time with families along the road to career success. It is over 40 years since I was a fresh-faced seventeen year old …
Over the past week, the systematic victimization of women in Hollywood by a serial sexual predator has caused many women to look at their own life experience and consider whether they have also been the victims of sexual harassment, or worse, in their workplace. Today I have been watching the intensity of the #MeToo campaign …
