RT @lilninjadoc: Reflections from this past week of holiday night shifts: . 1. Influenza A and RSV are everywhere. Wash your hands and mask….

RT @trushar_7: Thrilled to be a part of this study, led by @aaronjohnston, titled "Regional Medical Campuses in Canada: Exploring the Lands….

Regional Medical Campuses have been a key avenue of growth for medical training. Our article looks at the range of implementations across Canada, advancing understanding about implementations and helping to identify future opportunities.

. Stories about rural life and rural practice are a key way of helping premedical and medical students explore rural practice.

Canadian ED's are in trouble today (just ask anyone who has recently been a patient), but decreasing learner interest means that workforce challenges may INCREASE in the future. Let's choose to notice this important change.

The difficult conditions in Canadian ED's (overcrowding, long wait times, lack of privacy) is influencing learners who maynot wish to work in these conditions.

Check out our @CJEMonline letter raising concern about decreased applications to CCFP-EM (Emergency Medicine) residency programs.

At RhPAP’s community conference in Wainright AB. Dedicated community members from across AB together asking and sharing what they can do to support rural medicine.

Health workforce instability is hard on current patients, who can’t access a doctor. It’s also hard on future patients because it limits capacity to train the next generation of rural doctors.

Rural healthcare access and rural medical education are 2 sides of the same coin. The doctors who provide service are the same doctors that teach.

High River is one of the busiest rural medical teaching sites in Southern AB. It has historically been among the most stable sites, previously so stable there were discussions about having its own residency program.

Very excited to see the Physician Lead position for the Southern Alberta Medical Program posted. An important milestone in program development!.

RT @rithesh_ram: Stettler County, town join forces to offer financial incentives to address critical doctor shortage.Only 8 doctors serving….

Another example of how temporary rural health service closures can easily turn into permanent closures. Opening a closed service back up is so challenging. We need to support and protect rural health teams, and avoid even temporary closures.

I made an error in this post and the hospital beds should be per 1 K population. The data in the table is correct and the error is in my commentary. As someone who prefers long form writing I admit I find X challenging. Apologies for the inline error.

So, in addition to our current health workforce challenges we also have a health INFRASTRUCTURE challenge. Addressing this challenge will take a steady hand, a willingness to stay the course, and the use of good data to get back to a world class health system for Alberta.

This may have been OK in the past when Alberta was a younger and healthier province, but other data shows that Alberta is getting older, and more Albertans are living with chronic disease.

Yes, patients waiting for placement in skilled care facilities decrease bed availability, but no matter how you look at it we just have very few beds in comparison to other health systems in similar population size jurisdictions.

Although there are many issues contributing to the health care challenges in Alberta Emergency Departments, the lack of hospital beds cannot be ignored. Patients are stuck in the ED because there are no beds to move them to, because we have very few beds.

We are trying many new initiatives in Alberta Emergency Departments, to improve waiting times and patient flow, but it is difficult to bend the numbers, high effort for little change.