Posts by Sara Gangbar
Is compassionate leadership an antidote for health care burnout?
Can health care be a toxin for those providing care to others? The drive for cost savings, the increasing complexity of care, the menace of electronic medical records and the emotional challenges of responding to patient suffering put health care professionals at high risk for burnout. Today, burnout is common among all members of our health…
Read MoreIs healthcare innovation simply an act of compassion?
Northern Ontario covers 87% of Ontario’s land mass, is inhabited by 6% of the province’s population, and has the highest rates of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular, and respiratory disease in Ontario. Disease prevalence is highest in the 13% of Indigenous Northerners. Providing Northern Ontario health care in the future will be challenging as the lifestyles of…
Read MoreHow I choose to repair the world
I’m often asked why I do what I do. Actually, it’s rare that someone questions my decision to look after sick people as a physician. People also rarely wonder why I chose to get married or to have children. On the other hand, my academic interests – the focus of my research and educational work…
Read MoreCelebrating our first Change Day!
Change Day Ontario was designed to empower people within the health system to make positive changes by taking action and making pledges, big or small, to improve compassionate quality care. Our first Change Day is in the books and it was amazing!
Read MoreWatching someone die and feeling … nothing
The first time I witnessed a death, I was a third year medical student and at the very beginning of my training. My patient was older – in his late 70s – and all alone. His family dropped him off at the emergency department and were not reachable by phone. One of my first nights…
Read MoreThere’s room for competition in public healthcare
This is the last of a five-part series in The Globe and Mail on modernizing medicare looking at lessons from home and abroad Carol Propper is a professor of economics at Imperial College Business School, London Do competition and choice improve health care? Or is health care just too complex and emotive an area to…
Read MoreMedicare doesn’t have to be expensive…just look at Israel
This was the fourth of a five-part series in The Globe and Mail on modernizing medicare considering lessons from home and abroad. Bruce Rosen is director of the Smokler Center for Health Policy Research at the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute in Jerusalem. In Canada, there is an ongoing debate about whether to expand medicare to include a…
Read MoreAddressing jurisdictional disputes to improve Indigenous heath
This was the second of a five-part series in The Globe and Mail on modernizing medicare that considered lessons from home and abroad. Josée Lavoie is a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, and director of the Manitoba First Nations Centre for Aboriginal Health Research, at the University of Manitoba. In 2017, there…
Read MoreCanada should take healthcare lessons from Australia
This was the third of a five-part series in The Globe and Mail on modernizing medicare that considered lessons from home and abroad. Stephen Duckett is Director of the health program at Grattan Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and is a former head of the Australian Government Department of Health. Australia and Canada share many characteristics,…
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