Author Archives: John Sloan

A couple of very good friends in Vancouver somehow convinced the Canadian College of Family Physicians and Canadian Geriatrics Society to give me an award for innovation in geriatrics. I don’t deserve it. Here is my acceptance speech at the … Continue reading →

I post this here having already put it in my “Reviews” website because I think it’s well worth reading and I take a slightly different message than most reviewers from it. Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air. Random House, New … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →