Discussions

I get to thinking there's at least an opportunity, if not an explicit purpose, in our trajectory toward senescence. On bad days, it freaks me out and I enter my default existentialism that seems to have coloured most of my life, from frantically saving the dying insects on the surface of my childhood pool to contemplating the spirited air that must surround the hallways of our local hospice and its quiet lakeside dock.

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.

With some Ontario pharmacies starting to offer this service, it's brought up a lot of questions, challenges as well as benefits. As with any new service or change to workflow, pharmacies have had to plan, adapt and be agile to incorporate testing into their practice safely and efficiently. Let’s take a closer look at what COVID-19 testing at Ontario needs to take into consideration.