The ability of medicine to detect, heal and prevent ill health is undoubtedly among the crowning achievements of humanity. And those with access to state-of-the-art medicine are lucky indeed. In some respects, though, our faith in the increasingly sophisticated healthcare systems can blind us to a potential downside. Unnecessary tests and occasionally overzealous healthcare systems in the West have created a crisis of overdiagnosis, according to H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of Medicine at the

Robert Chu was a typical medical student in that he excelled at everything he did. He edited his high school newspaper and made it on the dean’s list in his undergraduate years. He volunteered to take notes for disabled students. After he got into medical school, he tutored hopefuls on the entry exam. “If somebody didn’t understand a concept, he was very good at explaining

IN THE 1970s, H. Gilbert Welch drove an ambulance as a college job in Boulder, Colorado, often blaring out Elton John’s Someone Saved My Life Tonight. Wanting to save lives led him to study medicine, but he came to realise that saving lives wasn’t as clear cut as he thought. Sometimes, he found, it can be better to do nothing. Welch became a physician and academic researcher, and he has spent the last 25 years warning of the dangers of overzealous medicine. He worries that doctors are detecting

Canadian doctors continue to follow the developments in the case of Dr. Hadiza Bawa-Garba, a junior doctor in the United Kingdom found guilty of manslaughter after a young boy under her care died because of medical error and systemic shortcomings. In late March, she was given a chance to appeal a ruling by the General Medical Council that saw her stripped of her medical licence. Medical residents in Canada are especially troubled that evidence used against Bawa-Garba included her honest reflecti

hen Dr. Lesley Barron was in medical school, she was told it would only be a matter of time before women occupied top leadership positions in medicine. There was reason for optimism. In 1995, a year before Barron graduated, more women than men entered medical school in Canada for the first time. Today, 63% of Canadian medical students are women. But a proportionate rise of female leaders in the profession has yet to be seen.

Dr. Sarah Newbery moved to Marathon, Ontario, to work in a group of family doctors in 1996. The group included three women and four men. Until then, there had never been a full-time female doctor in the community. Newbery has since seen the same shift occur in surrounding communities. A decade ago, there was a “frontier mentality” culture in northern medicine — it was a man’s world. Today, says Newbery, in many of the communities around her, more than half of the doctors are women.

ANDREW KOLODNY first noticed something was amiss in 2004, when his job as a medical director at New York City’s health department was to reduce drug overdose deaths. An expert in addiction treatment, he opened an evening and weekend clinic with the expectation that his patients would come from New York’s rougher neighbourhoods, where overdose deaths had been concentrated for decades. But many of those who turned up came from wealthy areas like Long Island and Westchester. About a third were eld

Behind an accordion divider in a heated trailer in Moss Park, Toronto, a nurse administers the anti-overdose drug naloxone to an unconscious young woman. On the other side of the...

Every morning, retired biology teacher Ingrid Dorner opens her laptop to check in on 14 white storks who roam the villages, fields, and forests near her home in western Germany....

Recent headlines about arsenic, mercury and lead being found in baby food sound pretty scary. But is there real cause for concern? We asked the experts. Arsenic, mercury, lead—the list...

Around 37% of Canadian medical students meet the criteria for burnout, according to a Canadian Federation of Medical Students (CFMS) survey sent to medical students across the country. (Preliminary data...

When most people think of obstructive sleep apnea, they usually associate the disorder with a certain type of patient and a certain set of symptoms: men, especially older men, who...

Carol Ward confronted a Manitoba doctor in 2014 with a photo of her daughter, Lisa Erickson, injecting drugs. She pleaded with the doctor to stop prescribing morphine to her daughter,...

A new study says that taking certain antibiotics early in pregnancy could increase your risk of having a miscarriage. When you’re pregnant and come down with an illness, you’re likely...

Technological change is already shaking up the profession. What is your relationship with technology going to be? Picture this: a patient walks into the emergency department and sits in front...

Last month, Health Canada announced proposed changes to how it regulates natural health products – everything from herbal supplements to minerals to homeopathic medicines. The new rules will prohibit natural...

It’s something that a patient who is worried about a surgery or recovering from a trauma is unlikely to think about. But behind the scenes, plastic syringes, single-use gowns, sterile...

In addition to being seen as cruel by addiction specialists, forced detox interferes with a patient’s care. “You have a whole bunch of behavioural issues and you create a conflict...