Canadian Health Information Podcast

Canada is facing an unprecedented shortage of health care professionals. COVID-19 is partly to blame, with some doctors and nurses simply burned out by the huge demands the pandemic has put on them. But there are several other key factors, including severe workplace stresses and a large cohort entering retirement age. On this episode of the CHIP, host Avis Favaro discusses the causes of these issues along with possible solutions with Dr. Leigh Chapman, Canada’s new chief nursing officer, and Dr. Doug Sinclair, the vice president of Medicine, Quality and Safety and former chief of emergency medicine at IWK Health Centre in Halifax.  This episode is available in English only. Audio clips courtesy CBC News, CTV News, CityNews

The COVID-19 pandemic changed life as Canadians knew it beginning in spring 2020, and among the hardest-hit groups were children and youth. On this week’s show, host Avis Favaro digs into the data with CIHI’s manager of Health System Analytics, Liudmila Husak. She is then joined by Chris Daken of Fredericton, N.B., who talks about losing his 16-year-old daughter, Lexi, to suicide amid the pandemic; and by Dr. Chris Wilkes, the division head for child and adolescent psychiatry for Alberta Health Services and the University of Calgary, on how mental health experts have been dealing with the effects the pandemic has had on our kids. This episode is available in English only.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced health care systems across the country to rapidly shift priorities to help save lives, but the result has been a huge backlog in care that will likely take a long time to fix. On this episode of the CHIP, host Avis Favaro chats with Laura Greer, who developed breast cancer while missing out on screening tests during the pandemic; thoracic surgeon Dr. Christian Finley of St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton; orthopedic surgeon Dr. Kishore Mulpuri of BC Children’s Hospital; and family physician Dr. Michael Green of Kingston, Ont., about their experiences during the height of the pandemic, the challenges health systems face and what needs to be done to get things back on track. This episode is available in English only.

Season 3 of the Canadian Health Information Podcast is coming soon and here to introduce herself ia our new host, Avis Favaro.

COVID-19 has impacted every aspect of the health care system in Canada, and one area where that impact is being felt the most is organ donation and transplantation. In 2020, there was a 14% decrease in solid organ transplants, with 4,129 Canadians on wait-lists to receive a transplant and 276 deaths while on wait-lists. Dr. Joseph Kim, nephrologist and co-chair of Health Canada’s Organ Donation and Transplantation Collaborative Data System Working Group, and patient Sandra Holdsworth, liver transplant recipient and award-winning advocate, join us on the CHIP to discuss what it’s like for physicians and patients inside the system and what can be done to save and improve more lives.

Canada’s universal health care system is a pillar of Canadian pride, but factors including geography and social determinants of health unfortunately mean that access to health care for Canadians living in rural and remote areas is often not the same as for those living in urban areas. We speak with Dr. Katharine Smart, a pediatrician who practises in Yukon and president of the Canadian Medical Association, to learn more about the challenges and opportunities associated with providing and receiving health care in rural and remote Canada.

The federal government’s recent speech from the throne included a key passage outlining the need for a better national health data strategy. We chat with Janet Davidson, administrator of the Nova Scotia Health Authority, and David O’Toole, CIHI’s president and CEO, about the importance of high-quality health data and how system enhancements could improve outcomes for people in Canada.

Canada typically spends billions of dollars a year on its health care systems, and for the first time, that number soared to over $300 billion in 2020 — spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. Helen Angus, Ontario’s deputy minister of health when the pandemic arrived in Canada, and Kim McGrail, a renowned health policy professor at UBC, join us on the CHIP to discuss the effects the pandemic has had on health care costs across the country. They also share their perspectives on what system planners should consider moving forward, and what Canadians should expect from these systems that are such a source of national pride.

Since the start of the pandemic, many Canadians have turned to online resources to stay informed. The crisis has been accompanied by an overabundance of information, and not all of it true, which has made it very difficult for people to find facts and reliable sources. We speak with André Picard, award-winning author and journalist, and health columnist at The Globe and Mail, about what it’s like to report during the pandemic, how social media has changed his work and the long-term effects he hopes COVID-19 will have on Canada’s health systems.

People in Canada observed the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation this autumn, after a heartbreaking summer that saw the recovery of thousands of remains from unmarked graves on the grounds of former Residential Schools across the country. We speak to Dr. Evan Adams, a Coast Salish from Tla’amin First Nation near Powell River, B.C., who is a renowned physician and public health expert, about the legacy of the Residential School system, its long-term impact on Indigenous health and the state of medical care for First Nations, Inuit and Metis people in Canada.