“If there is a medical doctor onboard, would they please make themselves known to the flight attendant?”
Many of us have heard this announcement and may have been tempted to sink into our seat, hoping to see a zealous emergency-room doctor jumping up to the rescue. For physicians who do not regularly work in ER settings, a reluctance to intervene in emergency situations is understandable. Nonetheless, physicians can take steps to prepare themselves for the next in-flight medical emergency.
While many view the process of documenting for services billed to the Medical Service Plan (MSP) as time consuming, it is one of the most important nonclinical requirements of a physician’s practice. The Billing Integrity Program will base their audit decisions primarily on the degree of documentation in a medical record.
Rabies is an almost invariably fatal zoonotic viral infection, and kills more than 59 000 people annually around the world, mostly in Asia and Africa. In Canada, rabies is rare; the last human case occurred in 2007. The only case in recent history in BC occurred in 2003 when an adult male was fatally infected with the bat-variant rabies virus. Potential rabies exposures, however, occur frequently and need to be assessed and managed properly.
A comprehensive literature review reveals how much our understanding of cognitive impairment and dementia (classified as major neurocognitive disorder in DSM-5) has changed over the last 2 decades. The incidence of dementia is projected to significantly increase in the next 30 years, and the burden of illness on society will be huge.
The population of older adults in Canada is growing rapidly. In 2008, adults aged 65 and older made up 14% of the population and this number is expected to rise to more than 27% by 2050.[1] Clinicians caring for older adults must be comfortable balancing quality of life with length of life when managing multiple comorbidities (also known as multimorbidity).
