Patient-First Language

Bill C-7 attempts to strike a balance between an individual's right to personal autonomy and self-determination and the need to protect vulnerable people who might feel pressured—either directly or indirectly by societal attitudes and a lack of support services—into seeking medical help to end their lives.

Where do I start to tell you about my best friend Sam? I've known him all of my life. While we've always lived apart, he's had a major influence on me and in many ways has shaped my life, making me who I am today. I know, I know, it sounds like hyperbole, but let me explain.

The pilot project saw the province team up with telemedicine provider Maple to provide islanders with access to the eight P.E.I. physicians who've signed on to meet with patients over the phone or video conferencing.

The court order, which will expire Nov. 27, 2020, prevents Dr. McKee from providing the 17-year-old with "counsel, advice or advocacy in preparation for, promotion of, or performing a double mastectomy or any surgery.”

Effective Nov. 2, 2020, the diagnosis of persistent and well-documented gender dysphoria is included in the list of criteria for MSI coverage for breast reduction.

I think about certain patients, displaced from the certainties of their lives in their home countries. They have, for complicated reasons, chosen to leave the world they grew up in to make a new life in Canada. The dominant culture here is so foreign, so strange to them. Some are ready to embrace it and go forward, and some are stuck and cannot adjust.

I wouldn’t have thought anything less of my day if the porters had arrived, not said a word and just moved around the various beds and wheelchairs, with us as patients in them, from the required point A to point B. But in the Civic day surgery unit, porters are not just porters, they are Walt Disney magical carpet ride directors.

Who would have thought that it might be good to talk about yourself in the third person? As if you weren’t you, but him? As if you weren’t actually there, and anyway, you didn’t want yourself to find out you were talking about him in case it seemed like, well, gossip? I mean, only royalty, or the personality-disordered, are able to talk like that without somebody phoning the police.