Episodios

  • Dr. Brian Day wants more private health care
    Oct 3 2025

    For three decades, Dr. Brian Day has been at the centre of the debate around private health care in Canada. Despite losing his court battle to bring it to B.C., Day still wants to see more private, for-profit clinics. The orthopedic surgeon and owner of Vancouver's Cambie Surgery Centre says competition from the private sector could push the public system to deliver faster and better care.

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    27 m
  • Giving mental-health emergency patients a room of their own
    Sep 26 2025

    Ottawa’s Montfort hospital sees twice the number of patients for mental health emergencies as the Ontario average. And as this number increased in recent years, the everyday environment of the ER waiting room – chaotic, loud and overstimulating – became an ever larger trigger, causing distressed patients to flee or harm themselves or others. In the new Mental Health Emergency Zone right off the main ER, everything has been designed for de-escalation, and staff and patients are seeing dramatic results.

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    27 m
  • The doctor Brampton needs
    Sep 19 2025

    Gurleen Kaur Chahal is one of the inaugural students at Toronto Metropolitan University’s new Peel Region medical school, designed to serve the area’s diverse population. She's determined to be part of the solution for the kinds of struggles her multigenerational Punjabi household has faced accessing care.

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    27 m
  • The human face of 'AI psychosis'
    Sep 12 2025

    After a seemingly innocuous question about pi, Allan Brooks tumbled down a ChatGPT rabbit hole. Three weeks later, he emerged, after spending 300 hours in a spiralling 7,000-prompt exchange with the chatbot. Dr. Keith Sakata, the psychiatrist whose viral thread on X breaks down the phenomenon known as “AI psychosis,” says the built-in sycophancy of large language models like ChatGPT needs to change before more harm is done.

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    27 m
  • Public pain, private care: Why one woman is paying to walk again
    Sep 5 2025

    How much would you be willing (and able) to pay to get your knee or hip replaced? Calgarian Linda Slater's knee pain became unbearable during her two-year wait to see an orthopedic surgeon. She drained her retirement savings to pay $30,000 for a new knee at a private Toronto clinic. Dr. Rick Zarnett, an orthopedic surgeon who works out of both a private clinic and public hospital, says the system needs to improve so patients can get surgery sooner.

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    27 m
  • ENCORE: What do “Ask your doctor” ads accomplish?
    Aug 29 2025

    Companies are spending big bucks advertising weight-loss drugs like Rybelsus, seeing huge potential in capitalizing on the popularity of Ozempic. But in Canada, so-called "reminder ads" can give only the name of the medication, not what it's for, telling people to ask their doctor for details. Ad man Terry O’Reilly says it can result in bad ads that turn people off, and pharmaceutical policy expert Barbara Mintzes says reminder ads can lead to overtreatment and high costs, doing more harm than good.

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    27 m
  • ENCORE: The battle rapper who battled colon cancer
    Aug 22 2025

    As a rapper, Bishop Brigante was no stranger to on-stage battles. We met up with the then-45-year-old when he was battling Stage 4 colon cancer, which he said was caught too late. Bishop wanted Canadians to have easier access to colonoscopies and said advocacy had given him newfound purpose.

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    27 m
  • ENCORE: Sex medicine doctors are putting women’s health, and pleasure, first
    Aug 15 2025

    Many women report difficulties with orgasms, low libido or pain around intercourse. And given that many have never even learned much about their genitals, they don’t always know where to get help. A cadre of Canadian doctors specializing in women’s sexual health is trying to change that. They’re helping patients boost pleasure, while empowering them to get to know their sexual anatomy.

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    27 m