Abortion has been legal, safe, and common in Canada since 1969. Since Canada became one of the first countries to completely decriminalize abortion in 1988, abortion has been regulated as a normal health service through standards set by clinical guidelines, facility accreditation, and health professional licensing. Abortion is a normal component of usual reproductive health care and is a publicly funded service. It is a common procedure undergone by nearly one-third of Canadian women during their reproductive years.
The health benefits of a timely and safe return to work after an injury or illness are well known.[1,2] Community family physicians are in a unique position to facilitate their patients’ recovery, and one way to do this is to use a fit note instead of a sick note.
Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death in women in Canada. Screening is done to find cancers early to reduce mortality and to allow for successful treatment with less aggressive therapy. There is a wealth of data on mammography screening dating to randomized controlled trials conducted from the 1960s through the early 1990s.
Modern medical education has a strong infatuation with the concept of resilience. It is the quality du jour, evidenced by resilience modules, chipper speeches on building resilience, and even residency program descriptions that ask applicants to address personal examples of resilience. It is not much of a leap to see where the impulse comes from—our culture is reiterating the messaging heard throughout society at large.
There is growing awareness that human activity is leading to environmental degradation and global climate change. We are witnessing the symptoms of an increasingly unhealthy planet as wildfires, droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events take their toll on human health. As health care providers, we contribute to this problem both as private citizens of a consumer society and as part of a health care system that contributes approximately 5% of the total greenhouse gases causing climate change.
