Casebook of a Community Internist
Blogs
- 4/3/2025
Lists of 10
Ten is an interesting number. It got me to think, what questions would I like answered about medicine? After a long career dealing with medical quandaries, I thought I’d list 10. - 3/21/2025
Can we improve system functionality by reducing student debt and restructuring training?
Back in my day, in the U.K., I got a government grant, and my tuition fees were paid. Nowadays the debt load of new grads is hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on province. Let’s look at solutions. - 3/10/2025
Medical truth
We are living in times when ‘the truth’ is more important than ever. Truth telling is a cornerstone of trust, upon which our profession depends. - 1/27/2025
Feedback
What Canadian healthcare needs is feedback from doctors, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, data managers, economists and patients (and their families). - 12/9/2024
Death and dying: what do young doctors need to know?
Dr. Hector Baillie writes how nowadays, the role of the doctor has become further removed from one-on-one compassionate care. - 11/7/2024
Walking in other people’s shoes: a thought experiment
Complexity is the reason the healthcare system is collapsing: patients are older, on more drugs, with high expectations, and not enough beds. - 10/29/2024
Young and old
I’d like to share with you the stories of two patients: the oldest and the youngest patients I have seen with a presentation of cardiac dysfunction. - 10/10/2024
Border zones: Liminal space in medicine and beyond
Overlap areas can prove to be some of the most dynamic. - 8/13/2024
Data: Musings on its importance in medicine
Four letters, two of them repeated. Not a big word. But one on which businesses are built and run by. And what is the most complicated business on the planet Earth? Medicine. - 8/6/2024
Pushing pills and curing ills
How long have physicians been pushing remedies for asymptomatic disease? - 7/22/2024
Context: an integral tool for educating patients
‘Well Bill, your master spark plug is getting rusty,’ I said to a 72-year-old retired mechanical engineer. - 6/19/2024
The retirement glidepath
Having had the privilege to re-write so many patients epilogues through his care, Dr. Hector Baillie reflects on the complicated task of creating his own.