April

Since the overdose crisis was declared a public health emergency in 2016, nearly 14 000 Canadians have died as a result. Due to the number of fatal overdoses, BC’s life expectancy has fallen for the first time in modern history.

Internet access and online resources have come a long way to providing additional support for rural physicians. While using online databases, point-of-care tools, textbooks, and journals has never been easier, rural physicians still face high-stakes challenges in isolated settings. Emergency medicine, geriatrics, and obstetrics/gynecology are all possible parts of a rural physician’s day, and the College Library has numerous ways for doctors to access the information they need.

Clinicians in British Columbia have been responding to COVID-19, the novel coronavirus that originated in late 2019 in Wuhan, China. The virus subsequently spread to countries around the globe, prompting the World Health Organization to declare it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. At the time of writing (28 February 2020), 83 324 cases have been reported, with the vast majority still in Mainland China. Fifty-one countries, including Canada, have reported imported cases, and a handful of countries, including Iran, Italy, and South Korea, are responding to local outbreaks.

Dr Kathleen Ross

“I shall not today attempt further to define [it]. . . but I know it when I see it.”     
—Justice Potter Stewart

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” begins Charles Dickens in his famous novel, A Tale of Two Cities, first published in 1859. I would like to think that human nature has gravitated more toward the best of times in the more than 160 years that have passed since this date.