Primary Care

Leadership lessons from a pot of flowers: Reawakening health-care leadership

Health care collapse is only one story. The deeper story lives underground, in the quiet places where resilience begins.

Smith has kept doctors and dollars in Alberta – but it doesn’t change access to care 

Alberta’s model may offer useful insight into whether a province can strengthen its public system by formally incorporating private activity rather than resisting it.

Queering the curriculum: Sexual orientation and gender identity in Canadian comprehensive sexuality education

Comprehensive sexual education plays a vital role in equipping young people with knowledge about their bodies, identities, rights and relationships. But access remains uneven across the country.

Living with stage 4 lobular breast cancer: What I want you to know

Lobular breast cancer is different. Vigilance matters. And stage 4 does not erase the possibility of hope or joy.

Using ‘integration’ to silence culturally specific care

When culturally specific care is allowed to vanish under another name, we all lose a piece of the commons we rely on.

One collective voice: Family doctors must speak up to protect our profession

Canadian family medicine is standing on a knife’s edge. We, as family doctors, need to decide our future.

Ontario has a new way of measuring how hard family doctors work. What does it mean for doctors and their patients?

The new “Continuity of Care” measure included in the new agreement between the Ontario government and its doctors has good intentions but comes with severe penalties and without necessary checks and balances.

The training gap undermining Canada’s primary care teams

While family medicine is exploring how to prepare doctors for team-based primary care, other health professions lack equivalent training requirements.

Empowering pharmacists is about more than saving emergency departments – it’s about equity in health care

Not only did Ontario's move to allow pharmacists to prescribe for certain minor ailments reduce ED strain, but it also reduced inequities in access to care.

We are taught to fix the system – then forced to waste time in it

Every year, medical students across the country must resubmit the same forms verifying their vaccine history. Redundant paperwork like this is a symptom of a system which bureaucracy overrides basic logic.

Black mistrust is logical and rational: What public health policymakers must learn from Black communities

Black communities are not hesitant just for the sake of it. They are hesitant because of memory. They need structural change built from trust, not just crisis.

Rethinking mental health and substance use health solutions

What if you or someone you know needs mental health and substance use health care right now? Do you know exactly where to go to get what you need?

We can no longer afford the wrong leadership for our medical organizations

Choose leaders for what they can do, not where they come from. The right competencies will carry the profession – and the health system – forward.

Training more doctors is a start. Let’s make sure our health system is ready for them

If we want to build a resilient, equitable health-care system, we need to reimagine how we recruit, train and retain the next generation of doctors.

Building capacity to attach all Ontarians to primary care: The Patient Core Team

As the province works toward attaching all Ontarians to primary care, it’s time to re-imagine how we build teams to support this new objective.

Calgary has won its latest skirmish, but the fluoride battle isn’t over

Medical experts in Canada and globally agree that fluoridation is a safe, effective way to help prevent tooth decay, especially in children. Yet, strong opposition to the measure persists.

Beyond funding: Why money alone won’t save primary care

As a physician who has witnessed this crisis unfold over 40 years of practice, I believe we need to examine why increased funding alone may not be sufficient to address the depth of our current crisis.

Health care’s domino effect: Turning challenges into building blocks

The very system meant to save our lives is quietly collapsing. This isn’t just a slow-motion crisis. It’s a domino chain already falling.

Beyond the signature: Is consent truly informed?

Moving forward, making informed consent truly informed – rooted in both equity and accessibility –  needs to be a priority, not just an ideal.

Healing the healers: Servant leadership and moral injury

In medicine, service and skill are not opposing forces. They’re inseparable. One without the other leads to harm. Together, service and skills just might help us heal.