White Coat, Black Art

For Black women in Nova Scotia, getting basic health care can be a real struggle – so the Nova Scotia Sisterhood, a primary care clinic in Dartmouth, takes a different approach. Detailed intakes lead to everything from cancer screening to mental health care, delivered by a Black female team that understands the community. And there are Pap parties, too.

Farley Yuras, 74, traveled to Poland to have both knees replaced after the wait in Edmonton became unbearable. He and his wife say that because of long delays, Alberta should reimburse people who leave the country for medically necessary surgery. Steven Lewis, an adjunct professor of health policy at UBC, says the wait for elective surgeries in many provinces is “chaos and anarchy,” and needs fixing.

Dr. Erin Norris used to hide her multiple sclerosis to preserve her career as a rheumatologist. She was following an unspoken rule in medicine: either you practice at 100%, or you can’t practice at all. Yet one in five Canadian MDs self-identifies as having a disability. Now, Dr. Norris has rebuilt a career that works for her – all while challenging an ableist medical culture that pushes doctors with disabilities out the door.

Minnesota nurse Shane Tyson was frustrated by patients going without care because they couldn’t afford medication, and shaken by an ICE arrest at his hospital. Meanwhile, Canada needs nurses – and when Tyson saw B.C. was recruiting, he made the move to Nanaimo. Local volunteers Tod and Jocelyn Maffin have built an online community helping health-care workers like Shane move to Canada.

Gurleen Kaur Chahal is one of the inaugural students at Toronto Metropolitan University’s new Peel Region medical school, designed to serve the area’s diverse population. In this encore episode, she shares her determination to be part of the solution for the kinds of struggles her multigenerational Punjabi household has faced accessing care.