July

Dr Kathleen Ross was bestowed the chain of office and became president of Doctors of BC on 31 May 2019. BCMJ editor Dr David Richardson sat down with her at her Coquitlam office earlier that month. Drs Ross and Richardson are contemporaries, both family physicians who graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at UBC.

In the past few decades, forms of heart failure have become increasingly common. The aging population is one of the contributing factors to this rise.[1] Understanding the natural history of a disease allows a clinician to have a good conversation with a patient or their caregivers about the expected course. Providing a prognosis is an often difficult conversation, fraught with uncertainty. In heart failure, there are generally episodes in a stepwise decline.

Dr Kathleen Ross

“The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.” — Peter Diamandis

This is my first BCMJ editorial, so I would like to introduce myself and offer my perspective on the enormous changes I have witnessed in the practice of medicine since being licensed in 1986.

Life is like that sometimes—one minute you’re sitting around the Editorial Board table and the next someone is saying how it’s time to make the BCMJ more like its editor—classic, durable, and meant to last another 10 to 15 years.