After spending time in the role of "out of town MD daughter" this wk, some observations on being a family member to sick inpatient. Lots of things still work in #healthcare & our outcome was positive but we are missing HUGE opportunities to #care in meaningful ways 1/8 🧵

1. When a bed is not available, time & info should be. ERs are terrifying, esp now. Very ill patients are boarded in ERs not designed to support them. ER boarded patients need more family support & engagment. If you have an ER boarded patient- talk w/ this family often. 2/8

2. "Anxious" families are engaged ppl w/ insight- don't dismiss them. Our labs & imaging are guided by what we know. Family is guided by their knowlegde of their loved one. Show humility, understand their concern. Care will be better for it & you might learn something. 3/

4. Modern hospitals should have excellent wifi & easy charging options for devices so that patient & family can stay connected. Facilitating virtual connection needs to be a necessary part of care for patients that are separated from loved ones due to ability/illness etc. 5/8

5. Invest in more care navigators/personalized patient experience supports. These flx are universally valued but only available to ppl navigating across the system, not to ppl admitted to it. An admission experience support team would be worth its weight in gold. Trust me. 6/8

7. Professional courtesies should not be needed. Everyone IS a colleague. We all hurt when our loved ones suffer. We can't say we believe in patient & family centered care if we don't respect the critical role of family in health promotion & healing. 8/8 Lady Glaucomflecken (she/her)

Albertans should be paying attention and be VERY concerned: Govt is marching forward with privatizing all of our HC system. Many many concerns w selling off hospitals to private for-profits: 🧵 1/12 buff.ly/NHDveGp

Read that again: for-profit private hospitals ONLY MAKES SENSE economically if govt intends to make Joe Albertan pay out of pocket for the profit margin costs... ABs should be very concerned. Did you vote for this? Does govt have a mandate for this? 12/12

Mark Lehman I think huge uproar might help… Probably fertile ground for referendum to prevent the sale of hospitals to for-profits…

Govt is investing money into private owned HC facilities that I'm hearing ends up costing more than if the govt built and ran it themselves. Ex: Mountview Health Complex ~170M in Capital Lease costs ~18M in equipment costs 🧵 1/5 buff.ly/4zx4TkK

5. I did a quick google search and found out that the video (which was propagated so quickly and has likely done serious harm to public health efforts in a time of unprecedented measles outbreaks) was AI generated. Totally fake news thecanadianpressnews.ca/fact_checking/…

Exercise is probably the single best way to extend lifespan. You need to exercise like your life depends on it. Because it does. Here's why. 👇🧵 /1

Today RFK Jr took the single biggest step towards destroying childhood vaccines When The New York Times asked me in December whether RFK could kill the vaccine program - I said he’d have to remove CDCs ACIP Welp… that’s exactly what he just did today Not good medpagetoday.com/infectiousdise…

I never tire of the outdoors. This country is a gift.

This is my lovely daughter Jess. It was taken on Christmas Day 2019. It was to be her last Christmas. She died on the 20th December the following year. She contacted her GP practice on 20 occasions in 5 months, but it was assumed her red flag symptoms were not cancer. 🧵1/3

Jess was diagnosed with stage 4 adenocarcinoma, cancer of an unknown primary, just 3 weeks before she died. She had paid for a private self- referral. Jess’s Rule, ‘Three strikes and we rethink’ is due to be launched into primary care this summer.

BREAKING: Secretary Kennedy just cut U.S. funding to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the alliance that has vaccinated over 1 billion children and prevented more than 17 million deaths since 2000. This isn’t about science. It’s about dangerous ideology overriding children’s lives. The consequences will be

Canadian youth should have a universal gap year theglobeandmail.com/opinion/articl…

Three decades as a surgeon teach you a lot—most of it now has nothing to do with surgery. You come to understand just how fragile the human body can be—and how remarkably resilient it is when given the chance. You see how often people wait, hoping things will get better on

Ontario govt pushes more patients to privately owned surgical clinics- instead of tapping underused OR capacity in hospitals. Report showed 1/3 of ORs are not in regular use because of staffing and funding issues. policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/… ctvnews.ca/toronto/politi…