Bedside medicine is individualistic on both sides of the bedrail. Doctors treat one patient at a time. Patients receive care in the same way.

Talk about teams applies to coordination and general working together. When you get to the bedside — doctor, nurse, RT, whatever — you are an individual treating another individual. Everything else disappears.

Mocking Stereotype

Sagging skin made her look even more shrunken than her 94 years. Oxygen tubing tangled with IV lines and ECG leads; restraints worthy of Lilliput.

She stared at her toes.

Her family stared at me, then her, then back to me. They cut vacation and carried Grandma home convinced she would die soon. They convinced me also.

We whispered a history and discussed death, dying, and advanced directives.

I turned to examine my tiny patient, scared I might break her porcelain frame.

“Excuse me,” I said, stethoscope in one hand reaching with my other for her shoulder. “I need to listen to your breathing…Could I bother you to move forward…just a little, so I can put my stethoscope…”

A fighter pilot never ejected as fast. Millimetres closer and her shoulder would have beaned me. Continue reading “One Patient at a Time: Individualism in Medicine”

“Canadians support freedom of religion because we live in a free democracy. But the reason we support freedom of conscience is because without it, our free democracy would not exist.”

This quote comes from an article I wrote for The Epoch Times.  Please click on the link to read the full article. Most of it is posted below.

Thanks so much!

 

Forced Referral and Freedom of Religion Vs Freedom of Conscience

A recent court decision in Ontario missed the mark when it ignored the impact forced referral has on freedom of conscience.

On May 15, the Ontario appeals court ruled that doctors must give patients a referral for euthanasia, abortion, and other contentious issues, regardless of what an individual doctor thinks about them.

The court battle started after the medical regulator in Ontario, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), created a policy that forced doctors to refer for procedures, regardless of doctors’ deeply held convictions of religion or conscience. Doctors who refuse would risk being fined and/or losing their license to practice medicine.

A coalition of doctors, led by the Christian Medical and Dental Society, the Canadian Federation of Catholic Physicians’ Societies, the Canadian Physicians for Life, and five individual physicians, challenged the policy in divisional court. The challenge ended with the court reducing the issue to religious beliefs versus medical needs. The court said religious doctors could change specialty to avoid contentious issues, and refusal to refer would harm access to medical care.

Therefore, the court ruled that doctors’ religious convictions should not trump patients’ needs. Continue reading “Forced Referral and Freedom of Religion Vs Freedom of Conscience”

I just finished Whole30.

The diet eliminates everything except meat and vegetables for 30 days.

Whole30 worked well and felt like death.

Doctors promote diet and exercise, all the time.

Dieting takes discipline. Discipline is a virtue. Ergo, doctors promote virtue.

Virtue is good. The lack of virtue is bad. Thus, doctors dictate morality on unsuspecting patients.

How dare they! 

Doctors do it all the time. In fact, special billing codes pay doctors to promote health. That is, government pays doctors to promote virtue.

Wait a second! That is not true. Continue reading “Physicians Promote Victorian Virtues”