It’s time to change what we measure when funding healthcare The prestigious Canadian Academy of Health Sciences annual meeting last week in Vancouver focused on chronic pain, and of course, the current catastrophe of opioid deaths was discussed. But most of the discussion was broader: What are the biological mechanisms underlying chronic pain? What […]
As clinicians, we are bound by professionalism and our ethical responsibilities to do no harm and to do what we can to address the pain and suffering of our patients. When powerful pain relieving opioid medications were introduced a few decades ago, they seemed to be a way to do both. We now know that […]
Opioid manufacturer admits to illegal activity in the United States but faces no penalties in Canada Purdue Pharma recently announced that it will stop advertising opioids to doctors in the United States after pleading guilty to misleading marketing more than a decade ago. This is a major, albeit belated, departure from the company’s playbook […]
Canada has had 2458 opioid related deaths in the past year According to the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI), the rate of opioid poisoning hospitalizations has been steadily on the rise with approximately 13 Canadians a day hospitalized for an opioid overdose in 2014-2015. What began with the over-prescription of opioids such as […]
Across Canada, the tragic spike in opioid-related deaths has brought to national attention the large and complex issue of drug use and misuse.
North America is grappling with an opioids epidemic. British Columbia has even declared a public health emergency because of a significant increase in opioid-related overdoses and deaths. Dr. David Juurlink, Head of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Toronto, and Tara Gomes, Epidemiologist and Scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital and […]
