BC Seniors’ Guide, updated

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 63, No. 7, September 2021, Pages 279-280 News

The updated BC Seniors’ Guide provides information on health, housing, finances, community supports, and more to help seniors continue living well. Print copies of the enhanced 12th edition are available in English, Chinese, French, Punjabi, Farsi, Korean, and Vietnamese. All languages can be accessed online in PDF format. The English version is online in an e-book format.

The guide includes information on programs such as:

  • Fair PharmaCare.
  • Medical Services Plan.
  • The Home Adaptations for Independence program, which provides financial assistance for low-income seniors to modify their homes.
  • Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters, which helps make rents affordable for low- to moderate-income seniors.
  • The BC Senior’s Supplement, which offers a provincial top-up to the federal Old Age Security/Guaranteed Income Supplement payment.
  • The Travel Assistance program, which offers discounts for travel within the province for medical specialists’ services not available in local communities.
  • The BC Bus Pass program, which offers subsidized bus passes to low-income seniors.

The 12th edition includes sections on digital literacy, cultural safety, LGBTQ2S+ supports, and medical assistance in dying. The guide directs individuals to the BC Centre for Disease Control for information on COVID-19.

To access the BC Seniors’ Guide in all seven languages, visit www.gov.bc.ca/seniorsguide. To order free print copies, call (toll-free) 1 877 952-3181.

. BC Seniors’ Guide, updated. BCMJ, Vol. 63, No. 7, September, 2021, Page(s) 279-280 - News.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

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