Author Archives: John Sloan

April 2017 I’ve been working in Canadian primary health care now for almost 40 years, and it seems to me that while in many ways we’re making progress, in others we keep making the same mistakes. At the moment our … Continue reading →

I work with a multidisciplinary emergency room team that tries to stop unnecessary hospital admission of frail old people. Again and again at the busy Vancouver General emerg family doctors who go on holiday without replacement, won’t make house calls, or … Continue reading →

Click here to see John Sloan reemphasizing the mismatch between critical care and the frail elderly.  

I ran across a recent review in the New Yorker by Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell, commenting on The Death of Cancer, a book by Dr. Vincent DeVita. Dr. DeVita is a leading cancer specialist in the United States who has … Continue reading →

A few weeks ago our team, normally focusing in the emergency room on avoiding unnecessary hospital admission in over-70s, was asked to see a 45-year-old lady who had come to the ER for the second time in four days. The … Continue reading →

Working in a big emergency room as part of a team that tries to intercept unnecessary hospital admissions of frail elderly people, I seem to find there are fewer elderly people who call an ambulance themselves and are brought to … Continue reading →

You can follow the string of my “Geriatric Doctor-In-Law” stories by searching through the posts here. Basically my wife Robin’s mum Liz and dad Nigel became quite frail over the last several years, at roughly the same time, with all … Continue reading →