Practice Nurses Tackling Obesity Epidemic

Canada is in the middle of a deadly obesity epidemic.  

Fast food, slow death  (North America)	Healthy for life  (Denmark)

Which life do you want future generations of Canadians to have?


Obesity is classed as a Body Mass Index (BMI) of over 30.  BMI is the ratio of your weight to your height.

The Pheonix Medical Practice computer system contains the height and weight of all of our patients who have been for their initial visit with our clinical team.  Each night our computer re-calculates every patient's BMI and works out what percentage of our patients have a BMI over 30.

Today, the computer says 28% of patients at the Phoenix Medical Practice are classed as obese.  In 1980 that figure would have been around 10%.

Obesity is a very serious medical condition.  

Obesity is a killer.  It puts a strain on your heart, lungs, blood vessels, and joints.  Your risk of getting diabetes goes up with your weight.  The World Health Organisation (WHO) suggests that 58% of diabetes, 21% of heart disease, and up to 42% of certain cancers are caused by higher weight (BMI above 21).

Condemning our children to a life of sickness and early death

Basically, your chances of being sick and dying young go up with your weight.    As obesity rates rise, our children face a life of ill health and short lifespan unknown since the rise of modern medicine.

It's a nightmare that is unfolding so slowly that few are noticing it even happening.   Combined with the body image problems of a size zero obsessed fashion industry, we have a society that has a terminal weight problem.

What can we do about it?   

The solutions are actually quite simple in theory.  We build roads that give priority to cyclists and walkers, we force the food industry to reduce hidden sugar and fat, and we tax sugary and fatty foods.   Of course, none of these things are going to happen any time soon in a capitalist economic system addicted to unhealthy food and big cars.  That's a discussion for you to have with your politicians.  Dr Jenni Zelin is hard at work doing a great job pushing for more cycle lanes in PEI

In the mean time, our Practice Nursing Team will be following the WHO advice.  The WHO is urging family physician teams to intervene with healthy eating and lifestyle advice.  Our team of nurses are already doing that.  They have lists of patients who are obese, and they will be working through the list calling them to offer them support and advice.  Our Practice Nurses can run a very successful weight management program with these patients.

The WHO wants to see this introduced nationally.  It thinks 40,000 Canadians will be saved if it is.  We agree.   Our team is already hard at work doing this.

The Phoenix Medical Practice - our new name!

The Phoenix Medical Practice is the new name of our medical practice.

We chose the name for several reasons.  The phoenix is the mythical bird that rises from the ashes.

• The Phoenix Medical Practice has been set up as a response to Dr Coull's failed attempt to set up a collaborative model of care in the Four Neighbourhoods Community Health Center between October 2008 and February 2009.  Four Neighbourhoods has since closed its family physician service.
• The Phoenix Medical Practice offices literally rose from the ashes of the old Maid Marion diner, which burnt to the ground in 2009.
• We - along with some of our clinical team and lots of our patients - are incomers making a new life in a new land.

Traditionally, family practices were named after the doctor who worked there.  For example, Dr Smith's Medical Practice.  As groups practices became more popular in the 1980s, the names became larger (eg: Dr Smith, Smith, and Jones).   Then as multi-disciplinary practice became the norm in the 1990s, using the doctor's name for the medical practice became less appropriate.  General names for medical practices lets everyone know that the medical practice is not just somewhere that you go to see a doctor.

Lots of professionals work in a modern Medical Practice as part of the team, and our new name reflects this.

We will be updating our letterheads, signage, and painting a mural in the children's play area over the next few weeks to represent our new name.

Update: new doctor pulls out of coming to PEI

**UPDATE**


Sadly, Dr Rawal has informed us that she has decided not to come to PEI.   We have been talking to her about her move here for over two years, and we are terribly disappointed that she has decided against coming.

This is a terrrible blow to our plans for the medical practice.  We have been working hard over the last few months planning for the expansion of the practice, and we are very disappointed by this news.

It means that we will not be able to provide the level of service to our patients that we would like.  We won't yet be able to provide the extended opening hours that we were planning.   We won't yet be able to stay open during the doctor's vacations.  We won't yet be able to provide the stability and sustainability that comes with a group practice.


We are actively looking for more doctors, and so we are hopeful that this is just a temporary setback.






Original post:


Our goal is to make sure that every patient in PEI has easy access to a family physician.  To do this we plan to keep our doors open to new patients.  Instead of closing our doors, as we register more patients we plan to add more doctors to our medical practice to meet demand.

As part of this plan, we have now appointed our second doctor.  Dr Susan Rawal is a GP (family physician) in England.  She is currently a partner in a medical practice with 21,000 patients.  However, her husband has taken a job as a radiologist at the QEH hospital in Charlottetown and they will be moving to PEI this year with their three young children.  Dr Rawal has kindly asked Health PEI if she can join our practice when she arrives and Health PEI have agreed to this.

The addition of a second doctor will make us a 'group practice'.  This means that all of our patients will have access to both doctors.  Patients will be able to book an appointment with the doctor of their choice.

We plan to continue to add more doctors to the practice as we grow over the next two to three years, and have a capacity in our current premises for up to 4 doctors and 12,000 patients.  We have also been approached about the possibility of opening a branch practice in the future in Prince County to tackle the physician shortage there.

This is fantastic news for the residents of Queens County who have struggled with a shortage of family physicians for so long.  Once up and running our medical practice will have the following advantages:

• A choice of which doctor you see when booking in advance.
• A choice of a female or male doctor depending on your needs.
• A medical practice that is never closed for vacations.
• A new 'Rapid Access Clinic' which will allow patients to see a doctor within 48hours for urgent conditions.
• A planned joint injection clinic.
• Patients will not 'lose' their family physician if one doctor leaves.  Even if one doctor leaves the group practice, the other doctors can carry on until a replacement is found.  This will hopefully mean an end to thousands of patients suddenly finding themselves without a family doctor. 

To do this we need to successfully attract and retain high quality family doctors to PEI over the next two to three years.   Because we are a modern, paperless, medical practice with a team of nurses and doctors working together, it is easier for us to attract doctors to the province:

• We operate the style of medical practice that modern family physicians are used to elsewhere.
• We have already been contacted by several Canadian doctors who have seen us on the internet and are interested in moving to PEI.  
• Our Health Care Technicians will be taking their Canadian exams over the next couple of years and may be able to become physicians within the practice once they obtain Canadian licenses.   
• One of our Health Care Technicians, Shirin Majdi Zadeh, will be leaving us to start her Family Practice intern training in the US in November.   We would be delighted if she chose to return to work with us in three years time when she is a fully qualified family doctor.
• Every month we are visited by doctors and people in health-related fields from around Canada interested in how we have set up our medical practice.

We are delighted to be able to continue our work to improve access to high quality care and I'm sure all our patients will be as excited as we are about Dr Rawal coming to join us in January.