Electronic Health Records and Aboriginal Peoples
May 22, 2012
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
[Download MP3] [itunes] [Bookmark Episode]
Guest Information
Episode Description
Dr. Janet Smylie is a family physician, public health researcher and research scientist who leads an Aboriginal Research program at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health, at St. Michael’s hospital, Toronto. Mabel Horton, RN, holds a Masters in Public Administration. She has key roles in electronic health record and related projects of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. They discuss electronic health records for Aboriginal peoples from physician and nursing perspectives. They analyze the impact of record systems on privacy and autonomy on Aboriginal peoples and their communities, summarize the challenges, and explain the steps taken by the communities to provide for protections and support. They say what developments are still needed to ensure that the communities fully benefit from the record systems. They state their messages for physicians caring for Aboriginal people living on and off reserve and stress the need to listen to Aboriginal people to understand their needs.
Family Caregivers Unite!
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
