Practice Tips

We’ve been getting by with virtual care, and during the pandemic, it may be the best option possible given the many constraints we are facing. But we need to recognize and value the relational effort that makes virtual care function. Ultimately, family medicine is built on relationships. It's relationships, in the clinic and in our communities that will get us through this pandemic.

In the summer of 2017, I was the treating emergency physician involved in the care of two Inuit children from Nunavik who were transferred to the Montreal Children’s Hospital (MCH) by Évacuations aéromédicales du Québec (ÉVAQ), the provincially run medical evacuation airlift service. The first child was a preschooler who fell off a moving all-terrain vehicle earlier that morning and was transferred to us with a suspicion of injuries to the abdomen and head.