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Northern Ontario Medical Journal
158 Elgin Street
Sudbury, ON
P3E 3N5
General Inquiries:
(705) 673-5705
Facsimile:
(705) 673-9542
Toll Free:
1-800-757-2766
President
Publisher
Editor
Web Development
Circulation Coordinator
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 Mental health beds moving to Sudbury
"There should be no tolerance of further dissent over the location of specialized beds. There should be an expectation for organizations and professionals to set aside past disputes and work co-operatively to maximize the quality of patient care." | |
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Rattler takes bite out of NE LHIN’s budget
The Massassauga Rattlesnake is protected and, now, with the re-establishment of an anti-venom depot at the Parry Sound Health Centre, so are Ontario cottagers and outdoor enthusiasts who have the bad luck to be bitten by one. | |
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Speaker addresses gender in medicine
Dr. Susan Phillips presented some thought-provoking information during a presentation entitled, "Is Evidence Enough? Gender in Medical Research, Practice and Education," as part of a Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) symposium series. | |
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New rehabilitation service opens doors
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. This ancient Chinese quote mirrors the philosophy University Health Network Rehabilitation Solutions (UHN RS) promotes with its clients. | |
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A few spoonfuls a day!
A natural bowel care program at Espanola Regional Hospital and Health Centre was recognized as a finalist at the Innovations in Health Care Expo in Toronto November 18th, but it's the residents of the centre's 62-bed nursing home who are the real winners. | |
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Sault hospital gets radiation bunker
A novel partnership between the Sault Area Hospital (SAH) and Sudbury Regional Hospital's Cancer Program will allow Sault Ste. Marie cancer patients to receive radiation treatments closer to home. | |
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North fights for nocturnal home hemodialysis
A Sudbury contractor and self-proclaimed advocate for nocturnal home hemodialysis, St. Amour got a crash course in kidney disease and the various forms of dialysis when both his wife and son Jessie were diagnosed with hereditary nephritis. | |
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VoIP phones complicate emergency response
Emergency 911 calls from conventional landlines are automatically routed to the appropriate call centre and provide communication officers with the caller's address, but with the proliferation of telecommunication technologies, calls also come in from a variety of other devices, including Voice over IP (VoIP) phones, cell phones, satellite phones, General Motors' OnStar service and SPOT satellite GPS messengers. | |
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North Bay cuts ribbon on new call centre
People in the districts of Nipissing, Parry Sound and Temiskaming who are in need of emergency medical services won't notice much of a difference, but for the communication officers and support staff at the North Bay Central Ambulance Communication Centre (CCAC), the new $3 million building they moved into December 1 is a dream come true. | |
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Sudbury explores creative ALC strategies
The Sudbury Alternate Level of Care Community Steering Group and the North East Local Health Integration Network (NE LHIN) have received the green light from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to use Memorial Hospital as a temporary care site for Sudbury Regional Hospital's alternate level of care (ALC) patients. | |
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Champion of the North wins OHA Award of Excellence
The Ontario Hospital Association chose Kirkland and District Hospital's president and CEO Hal Fjeldsted as the winner of the Small, Rural and Northern Award of Excellence for his dedication to promoting the interests and challenges of hospitals in Northern Ontario. | |
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Midwifery practice takes root in northern communities
The walls of misperception around the midwifery practice are crumbling as more people chose this specialized care.
Since the enactment of the Midwife Act January 1, 1994, midwives have
been a regulated health profession
funded by the Ontario government.
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Mattawa’s 41-year wait for hospital comes to an end
A 41-year wait for a new hospital in the Town of Mattawa has finally come to an end.
The new facility, replacing portable units in use since 1967, has 16 acute care beds, three complex continuing care beds, an emergency room, a lab and basic diagnostic equipment, including X-ray, ECG and ultrasound machines. It also accommodates several ambulatory care clinics and provides physiotherapy, mental health and other community services. | |
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Aging at Home
Aging at Home programs funded by the North West LHIN are helping to keep seniors from across northwestern Ontario out of long-term care homes. Respite care, housekeeping, home maintenance, snow plowing and transportation services are also designed to reduce pressure on emergency departments and acute care hospital beds. | |
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Docs to get bonus for taking orphan patients
The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care has announced plans to help orphan patients find a primary care provider. The new Health Care Connect service will take calls from orphan patients looking for a family physician or other primary care provider, register them in a database and arrange for care connectors in Community Care Access Centres (CCAC) to follow-up. | |
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Videoconferencing revolutionizes care for developmentally disabled adults
Eight organizations serving the developmentally disabled in Northern Ontario are no longer limited to the specialized resources within their own communities. Local organizations such as Community Living Algoma in Sault Ste. Marie and Options Northwest in Thunder Bay are now able to arrange consultations with psychologists, psychiatrists, speech pathologists and a variety of other professionals across the region and beyond through videoconferencing. | |
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Three new medical and research professionals join cancer care team
Dr. Kevin Ramchandar, originally from Kenora, will join the Regional Cancer Care team as a Radiation Oncologist in July 2009 upon the completion of his post-graduate medical training in Hamilton. Dr. Dolores Sicheri, a graduate of Columbia University and New York University Medical School, joined the team as a medical oncologist and hematologist. Dr. Oleg Rubel, PhD, joined the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute as a scientist within the Advanced Detection Devices research theme. Originally from the Ukraine, Dr. Rubel worked with Philipps-University Marburg in Germany. | |
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Timmins tackles ALC problem
In January 2008, half of Timmins District Hospital’s 112 acute care beds were taken up by alternate level of care (ALC) patients, most of them frail seniors no longer in need of acute care but with nowhere else to go. | |
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North rolls out red carpet for IMGs
They come to Ontario from all over the world, looking for peace and tranquility, economic gain and a better future for their children, but many of them have their hopes dashed. For every international medical graduate (IMG) who succeeds in qualifying to practice in Ontario, four to five others are reduced to driving cab or flipping burgers. | |
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Health officials take on E.coli
Containing an outbreak of E. coli (Escherichia coli) is not unlike an episode of the popular TV series CSI. It is an intensive and exhaustive process that puts health officials to the test.
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Common sense keeps E. coli at bay
E. coli 0157:H7 tends to occur naturally in cattle, but can also be found in other animals like sheep, goats, as well as humans. The bacteria are found in feces and can be transmitted from one person to another as a result of improper hand washing or other means.
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New dietitians fan out across the North
The road is long and the going slow, but day-by-day, patient-by-patient, the message is getting through – now more than ever, as the first wave of graduates from the North’s new Dietetic Internship Program begin spreading the gospel.
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CritiCall goes high-tech
Not too long ago, emergency room physicians in Ontario who required a consultation with a specialist or the transfer of a critically ill patient to a better equipped hospital could spend hours on the phone calling around for help. | |
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CPSO honours Dr. William McCready
Dr. William McCready, associate dean of faculty affairs at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM), has been honoured by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. Described by his colleagues as an “outstanding physician,†Dr. McCready was instrumental in the establishment of a renal unit at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and has been a driving force in the development and growth of medical training in Northern Ontario.
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Sudbury’s Family Health Team in business
The City of Lakes Family Health Team celebrated the opening of its Sudbury site on November 14. The team consists of seven physicians, four nurse practitioners, an RN and administrative staff, but plans to hire another RN and nurse practitioner as well as a pharmacist, registered dietitian and social worker.
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Sault Hospital receives BD Canada safety award
Sault Area Hospital (SAH) has received the BD Canada Safety Recognition Award recognizing health-care institutions across Canada that are committed to providing a safer environment to their patients and staff through the use of BD Safety-Engineered Medical Systems (SEMS). BD Canada serves health-care institutions, life science researchers, clinical laboratories, industry and the general public with a wide array of safety-engineered medical devices, including syringes to protect healthcare workers against sharps injuries. | |
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North struggles to develop FASD services
Imagine being a single mom from Caribou Lake or some other Northern Ontario community and having to travel back and forth to Toronto with three kids in tow for a diagnostic assessment at a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) Clinic. | |
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North pushes for Regional Geriatric Program
Twenty years after the establishment of regional geriatric programs (RGPs) at academic health sciences centres in Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto, Hamilton and London, efforts are finally underway to create one or more regional geriatric programs in Northern Ontario. | |
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Geriatric training targets front-line providers
The timing of a $1.7 million project aimed at developing a province-wide network of expertise in geriatric care couldn’t have come at a better time for Northern Ontario. Conceived by Dr. David Ryan, director of education with the Regional Geriatric Program (RGP) of Toronto, the Network of Centres of Excellence in Practice Based Inter-professional Education and Inter-organizational Collaboration in Geriatric Care will bring together representatives from family health teams, community health centres and other health-care organizations across Ontario to improve the quality of care for frail seniors.
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LU keeps radiation therapists at home
Laurentian University’s Radiation Therapy program has accomplished two of its primary goals: making training in this profession more accessible to students in Northern Ontario, and retaining health-care professionals in northern and rural settings.
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Physician assistants ease wait times
During his first few months of employment in the Emergency Department of Timmins District Hospital, Shawn Best figures he spent at least a half hour every day fielding questions from hospital staff about who he was and what he did. | |
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Nurse trades scrubs for boxing gloves
As a registered nurse working the graveyard shift, Amber Konikow spends her nights taking care of gravely sick and injured people in the intensive care unit at Sudbury Regional Hospital. | |
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Docs lace up in Thunder Bay
There was no shortage of doctors in Thunder Bay April 3 to 5 when some 540 physicians from across Ontario descended on the city for the annual Docs-on-Ice hockey tournament. | |
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North Bay General takes lead in health and safety
When things go wrong in the airline industry, a nuclear power plant or a mine, the result can often be catastrophic. Images of radioactive plumes, body bags and mine rescue teams racing against the clock to free trapped miners have instilled in all three industries a culture of safety that has put the health care sector to shame. Until now.
In the aftermath of the 1998 Krever Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada and the 2006 Campbell Commission on the SARS crisis, health care administrators are finally getting serious about workplace safety. | |
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Prostate screening urged for early detection
In 2007, 556 men in northeastern Ontario had a heart-to-heart talk with their urologist. Prostate cancer ranks ahead of breast, colon and lung cancer in terms of the number of cases reported every year, but trails all three in terms of morbidity. | |
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Sudbury Regional pilots smoking cessation program
Sudbury Regional Hospital will initiate an in-patient smoking cessation pilot program based on the so-called Ottawa model later this summer, said Dr. Amanda Hey, clinical lead for preventive oncology and screening for the Sudbury Regional Cancer Program. | |
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Joint Centre speeds surgeries
Patients undergoing hip and knee replacement surgery at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre used to spend as many as eight days in hospital recovering from their operation, and that didn’t count time spent in rehab at St. Joseph’s Care Group. | |
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Emergency team improves outcomes
A Medical Emergency Team (MET) at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is being credited with having a significant impact on patient outcomes. One of 31 critical care response teams funded by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, the Thunder Bay initiative has contributed to a decrease in hospital mortalities and cardiac arrests, claimed Dr. Adrian Robertson, the team’s physician lead. | |
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Tissue bank takes shape
Hospitals in Ontario have a new resource to draw upon when searching for the human tissues needed to do certain surgeries.
The Lake Superior Centre for Regenerative Medicine, or RegenMed, opened in Thunder Bay Nov. 28 with the help of $1 million in funding from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation and FedNor. | |
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Medical information kits popular
John Whitehead, general manager of Care Link, a medical alarm response company serving Sudbury, North Bay and Timmins, had no way of knowing that a little marketing idea he and his management team dreamed up would be such a hit with emergency medical service personnel and health-care professionals. | |
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Assessment Centre cuts wait times
The average wait time to see an orthopedic surgeon for a hip or knee replacement consultation in northwestern Ontario has fallen dramatically since the establishment of the Regional Joint Assessment Centre at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre. | |
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Return to work sparks debate
The release of an Ontario Medical Association (OMA) position paper on the role of family physicians in the timely return to work process has put the spotlight on an issue that regularly raises the blood pressure of Ontario doctors. | |
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Planning for the unknown
As flu season approaches, health units across Northern Ontario are planning for the onset of the H1N1 virus, also known as the pandemic human swine influenza. | |
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Northwest tackles chronic diseases
Hundreds of people across northwestern Ontario are learning how to better manage their chronic diseases thanks to the North West LHIN's introduction of the Stanford School of Medicine Chronic Disease Self-Management Program. | |
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North Bay receives FASD funding
On April 2, good news in the form of a $120,800 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation made it possible for Cousineau to promote awareness and education of FASD within North Bay and Nipissing District. | |
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