- © 2008 Canadian Medical Association
Med school review: The Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada has launched a 2-year exercise to review all facets of medical education, including whether laxer entry requirements, shortened training periods and lower tuition fees would help to resolve the nation's projected shortage of physicians. Among options to be analyzed include allowing students to enter medical school without having obtained an undergraduate degree and shaving a year off basic medical training, which would allow students to graduate in 3 years, as opposed to 4. The latter was among measures recently urged by CMAJ's editorial team (CMAJ 2008:178(1]11).
Rx for change: The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health and the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care group have launched a publicly accessible electronic database on the relative merits of evidence-based interventions like academic detailing, therapeutics letters and e-detailing. It's aimed at providing health care policymakers, health professionals and consumers with information about the effectiveness of strategies or programs to promote optimal drug prescribing. The database is available at www.cadth.ca.
Child-size: The World Health Organization has unveiled a “make medicines child size” campaign aimed at the development of antibiotics, pain medications and other drugs in dosage forms that are tailored to children's bodies and metabolic needs. The agency also released a list of 206 medicines that they deem safe for children's use. The WHO projects that roughly 6 million children under the age of 5 die annually from treatable conditions and could be saved with “readily available, safe, effective and affordable” medicines.
Triple B: The development of a strategic framework for health research is among 10 “calls to action” identified as national priorities in a report from the Association of Canadian Academic Healthcare Organizations entitled From Bench to Bedside to Business. Others include development of a “sustainable, multi-year federal fiscal framework for public investments in health research” and new mechanisms for commercializing research findings. The report, which also surveys current metrics for ascertaining the return-on-investment in health research, is available at www.acaho.org.
Bite-size: It's $10 in Los Angeles and $2 in Toronto. That's Starbucks or Tim Horton's. Taking a lead from a California medical centre that offers doctors $10 Starbucks certificates if they wash their hands, Toronto's University Health Network will handout $2 Timmy's certificates to doctors, nurses and other staff at its Princess Margaret, Toronto General and Toronto Western hospitals who are spotted complying with basic Network hand-hygiene policy aimed at reducing nosocomial methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection rates.
Laurels: University of Toronto and McLaughlin–Rotman Centre for Global Health senior scientist and bioethicist Peter Singer has been awarded the Michael Smith Prize from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The prize, complete with $500 000 contribution toward his research program, is awarded annually to Canada's “Health Researcher of the Year.” Singer proposes to use the money in furtherance of efforts to help African researchers develop and commercialize products that address health problems on their continent.
Hiring spree: Canada's 92 universities and university colleges will have to hire as many as 35 600 new faculty by 2016 to address retirements and enrolment growth, which is projected to rise nationally by between 70 000 and 150 000 full-time students over the next decade, according a new study by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. Further details are available at: www.aucc.ca.
Give a day: Upwards of $400 000 “and counting” was donated during the 2007 Give a Day to World AIDS campaign, which challenged doctors, other professionals and all Canadians to contribute income earned on World AIDS Day (Dec. 1) to organizations that have programs aimed at fighting the pandemic in Africa. Launched in 2004 by Markham Stouffville Hospital physician Jane Philpott, the campaign raised over $500 000 in 2006. Details are available at www.giveaday.ca.