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Posts Tagged ‘Health’

Everyone reacts differently to air pollution. Children, the elderly and those with heart or lung disease are most sensitive to the adverse health effects of air pollution. People with diabetes are also at greater risk because they are more prone to heart disease. Even Canadians who are relatively fit and healthy can experience symptoms when exercising or working outdoors if pollution levels are higher than usual.

This winter, pay attention to the air pollution readings in your area, even if the sky is blue and the air smells clean and fresh. Depending on the length of time you are exposed, your health status and the concentration of pollutants in your area, air pollution can make it harder to breathe, irritate your eyes, nose and throat and worsen chronic diseases such as heart disease, chronic bronchitis, emphysema and asthma.

The Government of Canada is making it easier for Canadians and their families to plan their activities around the quality of the air in their communities. The new Air Quality Health Index is currently available in certain Canadian communities, with more to follow. The index measures three contaminants known to contribute to air pollution – ozone, fine particulates and nitrogen oxide – and gives out readings from one to 10 with health risks associated with each number. The higher the number, the greater the health risk.

This winter, take the guesswork out of planning your outdoor activities and see what the air quality is like in your area. The AQHI is available in parts of British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with more areas to follow as implementation expands across the country. The index measures air quality on a scale from one to 10 and offers suggestions for modifying your activity to reduce your level of exposure to air pollution, depending on your risk factors. For more information on the AQHI, please visit www.airhealth.ca.

Are you tired of this Earth? Is your heart heavy with regret and fear that this world may be destroyed without a fight then what are you doing? Stop air polluting! If you say that you are only a mere normal person and there is nothing much that you can do then you are mistaken. The effort to make this world a clean and better place to live in must come from you.

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Yes, we humans are the major contributors to air pollution. There is nothing else that we can do but to do our part in battling air pollution. Let us start with ourselves. Here are some things that we can do.

1) Plant more trees and plants. In this way you are trying to do your part in clearing the air. 2) Stop smoking. Yes, it is not only for your health but for the environment. 3) Try to commute rather than riding in your own car, if you can walk your way to your destination then well and good. 4) Do thing manually. Try to lessen the use of your electronics and appliances. Less energy consumed the better. 5) Don’t use chemicals, sprays, pesticides and other harmful liquids.

6) try to eat foods which are produced locally, you can save much energy. 7) Put off the light when they are not in use. Make sure that electricity is not wasted. 8) Practice the 3R’s, reduce, reuse and recycle. 9) Use alternative energy like wind and solar. 10) If you can afford buying a hybrid car the better.

Stop air polluting with these ways mentioned. Do it now and do your part for the environment. Make this world a better place to live in. Air pollution must be stop now, not tomorrow or the weeks to come.

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It cannot be denied that air pollution creates a big impact in our lives, most especially on our health and the environment. If the world we live in continues to worsen in the years to come, I cannot imagine anymore what our grandchildren will make of this world. There are a lot of negative effects of air pollution on environment. Let us discuss one by one what are they and how we may be able to address every effects of air pollution.

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Since air pollution is part of global warming, it is safe to say that it can cause flooding due to the melting of ice and warming of the Earth more than the normal. It can surely affect our ecosystem as well as the quality of life of our plants and animals.

Have you seen all the smogs in highly populated countries? It is an indication that there exists a not so desirable amount of air pollution. It can also contribute to the formation of acid rain which is not safe to people and other living things.  Not only does it affects the environment but also affects much the health of every individual on this planet.

One cannot help but be concerned with the increasing problem of air pollution. If we continue to be like this and destroy our environment, definitely everything will be destroyed even us.  The food that we eat, the water we drink, the air that we breathe and everything else around us will all be destroyed. If you want all of this to happen then do not do anything but if you want to save Mother Earth then do something to save the planet from destruction.

Effects of air pollution on environment can be distressing and detrimental then do something to make everything right. Do it now and do it fast.

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 Where are we heading in “Modern” Health Services?

Although I am aware that there are significant differences between health services in different countries -and in fact within the same country-; as health worker, we all share an underlying commonality to a certain degree. I am writing this article under the assumption that, in this current era of “globalisation” and “standardisation”, there is a universal demand for the “modernisation” of health services. The health system has been forced to incorporate, within its constitution, terms such as health delivery management, strategic planning, strategic improvement, governance and quality, amongst many other fashionable words brandished around these days (the likes of which, yours truly finds confusing sometimes). However, we must accept that all of the above are part of the continuous evolution of the health service.

Before I proceed further, I would like to clarify to the readers the use of the word “modernising” in the context of this article. Here, I am referring to the involvement of numerous and diverse areas of expertise (e.g. business, aviation) within the field of health. This new approach has placed additional expectations on the clinicians, requiring them to possess reasonable knowledge in various fields. These skills include management, budgeting, cost, strategic development and other tasks which were previously left to the administration ‘to deal with’, whereas we clinicians were expected to focus on improving our clinical skills and, even more importantly, satisfying /managing our patients. I imagine that many of you will agree with me that this is a very nostalgic view, which is rarely found in this modern day and age.

I am not going to bore you with details about the health service where I work, as I do not believe it to be of significant importance; it would in fact defeat the purpose of provoking a debate relating to the key question of this article (i.e. the title). It would suffice to say that there is a pressure, as a health provider, to embrace a great deal of management, business and budgeting concepts. I am like most clinicians; work in a rapidly “modernising” health system.  Hopefully, once the reader continues scanning through the article, they will understand why I elected to use this generalization.

My guess is when we look at “modernizing” health services in different countries there appear to be a significant difference between them at first glance but once we “dig deep” and examine in depth the fundamental structure of most of the health services (wither it is private, governmental, insured, free or hybrid) I assume that the reader will find common points, at least partially.

 I, as a health provider find myself in a strange position of being instructed to be knowledgeable about “quality ” , “management”, “strategic planning” ,”updating my evidence based knowledge” , “understanding the fundamentals of accounting and budgeting”  amongst many other words, which my memory could barely remember ,let alone grasp.

The main problem is all of the above are dictated to me by different parties whose priorities (rightly or wrongly) lie within their own “primary target”.  

One could argue that all of the above could be part of one thing and by doing one; this will lead to the achievement of the others (i.e. domino effect). This is a point which I hope my article would encourage debating.

From my humble point of view, I still cannot cope with all “the priorities” I am bombarded with and I do find contradiction in many of them; especially when it comes to (if we break it down in to a simple, old fashioned targets) patients’ care versus cost which- rightly or wrongly- in my opinion, what the main issue boils up to (this is again a controversial statement and subjected to debate).

I am here not to find a solution or to offer an “ideal” way to balance a juggling act, as I am still picking up the pieces and trying again and again to be able to pull up the act efficiently in front of many anticipating audiences, each looking at me from a different angle with different expectation.

I wish that I could say that I managed but the reality is that I could not. My department and my hospital could not and more importantly my health service leaders cannot which is the most worrying concern because it is these “experts” who are suppose to guide us,  yet sometimes you feel that the blind leading the blind.

So what happened in a decade or so to lead us; and I apologies for the generalization; to be entangled in this “modernizing” health service?

I myself are nostalgic for the day when we say patient comes first and we DO mean patient comes first. Yet, I find myself focusing less on patients and looking more at statistics, strategies, missions, visions, audits, surveys etc and although (please do not get me wrong) I am all for the above, but it is becoming harder and harder to balance my already flawed juggling act.

Allow me to give an example to demonstrate what I mean. As a consultant psychiatrist, I obviously posses skills that my colleagues may lack or are not be “privileged/ technically speaking” to carry. An example for a surgeon is a type of surgical procedure, for a radiologist a special radiological technique. In my case a therapy for certain disorders that required years of supervision and learning. Again, one may argue that I should take responsibility and that this is my own fault as I should transferred my knowledge to my colleges, but here where the dilemma lie, as time, ethics are against me. Clinically I am expected to priorities my time but this raises another dilemma as my time is not entirely in my hand and the vicious cycle goes on.   

Let me give a real life example which I hope will demonstrate the above argument. When I joined my current department I started (naively) to accept undertaking therapy for patients with personality disorder (i.e. a condition which requires specific skills learned through years of supervision and practice) as the waiting list was long, and I was the only person with the expertise to manage this population. I went to my secretary and with an authoritative instruction, told her to arrange booking one hour a day every Tuesday at 11am for at least 20 weeks minimum, with the possibility of increasing the number of session. The poor secretary looked at me and did the necessary.  After two sessions of relatively positive rapport building with my client, the time for the third session approached.  As the time for the session came my secretary called and informed me that there is a “mandatory” emergency meeting for all heads of department with the human resources to discuss an extremely important issue. Dilemma again, what should I do?  I thought that our motto of “do no harm” and ethically as my patient has a real risk of feeling abandoned (which could have a catastrophic effect on therapy) and more important could lead to risk of serious self harm, I made the decision not to attend the meeting and see the patient instead.

Next day, a warning letter was delivered to me through my work email and due to my absence (even though I have sent the reason, and asked one of my colleges to attend the meeting) our department has lost in term of some administrative decision making.

That was my baptism of fire and my welcome to the modern health care. As a head of department I find myself more and more involved in writing the ideal setting to serve our clients but the time consumed in this preventing me from doing exactly what I am writing!.

I wish that the issue is related to me only, but even down the “chain of command” each member of my staff is finding it more and more difficult to focus on patient, and more of their work involving replaying to emails, cutting cost, achieving targets, filling endless forms, auditing, teaching, gathering educational hours, coming with initiatives, fulfilling their objectives in the appraisal and much much more.

I hope that my experience and my words echoes with similar experiences with the readers and as I have mentioned in the beginning, I am not looking for solution but I am hoping to provoke a serious debate about where are we heading in this era of so called “modernisation” and is the involvement of many parties and philosophies in the process beneficial to the end result (patients)?.

I am looking forward for a thought provoking debate and would be grateful for any of the readers from different evolving health services to share their thoughts and opinions.

Medical tourism is gradually becoming an integral part of the travel and tourism industry and thus a highly viable revenue generator. In fact airlines now days also come forward and cooperate in terms of their deals and services when a patient takes a trip to some distant place for a treatment. It is this cooperation between the travel and medical industry which made it possible for medical tourism to reach its present level of popularity and glory. And many countries across the globe have also developed a cordial relationship among each other through the medical tourists or in other words the cross-border patients.

Medical tourism has also enforced the concept of travel for a purpose and purpose does not necessarily mean a business purpose only. Rather something more important than that, because as they say “health is wealth”. Medical tourism has provided the opportunity to choose the best possible medical care without the restraints of any geographical boundaries. This seems to be one of the greatest blessings of the concept of globalisation. It has encouraged the friends and families of the patient to nurture a hope in their mind.

It cannot be denied that all this has become possible because world has become a very small place. And more than that almost every corner of the world has become accessible from any other corner. And this is made possible due to the massive advancement of transportation and communication system.  Indeed even a few years back people could not even dream of going to some other place for a medical treatment or for getting an important surgery done.

It goes without saying that every single sphere of life is interlinked and thus each and every industry is related to each other in some way or other. Thus with the development of the concept of global medical tourism all industries related to the concept have grown and expanded like that of the travel industry, the aviation industry, the telecommunication industry and so on and so forth. More and more travel packages have come up to cater to the requirements of the travelling patient and their companions. Travel agents started specializing on or focusing on this particular brand of tourism. Then again the software industry is coming up with new applications which help in keeping patient records in a more user-friendly manner. More and more websites are coming up focusing on offering patients with all services related to medical tourism at one place within just a few clicks.

Indeed medical tourism is gradually developing into a full grown industry in itself.