White Coat, Black Art

When Ned Bell’s wife was recovering from cancer surgery at Vancouver General Hospital, the unappetizing food she was served left a bad taste in his mouth. So the five-star chef teamed up with his wife’s surgeon to revamp patient meals. Dr. Brian Goldman visits Chef Bell in the hospital’s test kitchen to see how the new “Planetary Health Menu” helps boost patient health and reduce the carbon footprint of traditional hospital food.

In this season of bearing gifts, it’s been said the highest form of giving is the anonymous kind. Heather Badenoch knows that very well. She donated part of her liver to a child she never met in Toronto. Now she uses her communications skills to recruit donors for people in need of an organ.

Former senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Murray Sinclair spent the last four months of his life at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg. He found comfort in the music of Quinton Poitras, a Métis musician with Artists in Healthcare Manitoba who played his favourites, especially the blues. Niigaan Sinclair says that even though his father was in a lot of pain, the music helped him feel joy in the moment.

Josh Booth has a pitch for Canada: Bring in nurse anesthetists to help deal with Canada’s shortage of anesthesiologists, the doctors who manage sedation before and during surgery. Booth, a Canadian certified registered nurse anesthetist working in the U.S., says health professionals like him can help handle the demand for anesthesia. B.C. has tried twice to bring in the nursing role but it has yet to happen. Dr. Giuseppe Fuda, president of the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society, says there are concerns about bringing in nurse anesthetists to our healthcare system.

Ian Stedman Googled his rash and self-diagnosed a rare genetic condition called Muckle-Wells syndrome. It took him 32 years and almost 200 inconclusive doctor visits. A decade later, he's on a mission to get AI into the Canadian healthcare system to help diagnose and treat rare diseases faster.

More Quebeckers are paying to see a family doc for services that should be covered publicly. Dr. Martin Potter explains why he founded Clinique Santé Plus after 20 years in the public system. But Dr. Bernard Ho of Canadian Doctors for Medicare says Quebec may be a bellwether for the rest of Canada, and private-pay family medicine puts the public system, and individual patients, at risk.

In Quebec, family medicine is the latest troubling frontier in a two-tier system that's been quietly growing for years. Dr. Brian Goldman visits Clinique Santé Plus in Vaudreuil to learn why the clinic's youngest doctor turned away from the public system. Two patients - one languishing on a waitlist for a family doctor, and one who can never reach hers - explain why $150 is worth 15 minutes with a private family doctor.

For decades, Ian Stedman lived with severe rashes, constant joint pain, red eyes and debilitating migraines. He saw dozens of doctors, but no one knew what was wrong with him. So he gave up. But when his infant daughter started showing the same symptoms, he turned to the internet. After a lot of research, he successfully diagnosed himself with a disease so rare, only one in a million people have it.

Pete Pearson, 74, is not ready to die. He was diagnosed six years ago with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which has an average survival rate of 2-3 years after diagnosis. He knows he's on borrowed time, and has been dealing with anxiety and depression. That’s why he's seeking approval from Health Canada to use psilocybin as part of a treatment called psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. His son Blake, who is also a family doctor, believes it can help his dad live the rest of his life to the fullest.

They needed certainty. They got chaos. For over a decade, countless people from at least five different countries put their trust in a company offering prenatal paternity tests. It promised clients “99.9% accuracy” — but then routinely, for over a decade, identified the wrong biological fathers. Investigative journalists Jorge Barrera and Rachel Houlihan track down the people whose lives were torn apart by these bad results, the shattered families and acrimonious court cases that followed, and the story behind the company that continues to stand by its testing and is still operating today. More episodes of Uncover are available at: https://lnk.to/AiF3rdPo

Many women report sexual health difficulties and don’t always know where to go for help. A small cadre of Canadian doctors specializing in women’s sexual health is trying to change that. They’re helping patients boost pleasure, while empowering them to get to know their sexual anatomy.

When the last full-time doctor left the small town of Carberry, Manitoba in 2023, the responsibility of providing healthcare was left on the shoulders of nurses. In our second show from Carberry, Dr. Brian Goldman learns from a retired nurse just how robust rural healthcare once was. And when Brian witnesses a health emergency first hand, he sees the toll a town without doctors is taking on one nurse practitioner.

Like many Canadian small towns, Carberry, MB had become a healthcare desert. In 2023, the small ER closed and the last doctor left. Carberry embarked on the fight of its life to get healthcare back. And now, just days before the first of two new MDs starts work, Dr. Brian Goldman visits Carberry to learn about the Herculean efforts it takes for one town to reinstate healthcare, and make sure they don't lose it again.

When Mary Jarratt's brother, Billy, had a debilitating stroke at the age of 58, she was thrown into the role of power of attorney. That meant making significant decisions on Billy's behalf, including his personal care, the care of his high school-aged son, and whether to sell the family home. It has taken a physical and emotional toll on her and she wants people to know what they’re getting into when they sign up to be a POA.

When he's not working in the ER, Dr. Nicholas Sparrow spends his spare time in a surprising way. He responds to critical threat-to-life calls as a volunteer through the Kootenay Emergency Response Physicians Association (KERPA), a charity he created. Dr. Brian Goldman rides along on one of Dr. Sparrow's shifts to learn how - and why - he does it.

Companies are spending big bucks advertising weight-loss drugs like Rybelsus and Ozempic. But in Canada, "reminder ads" can give only the medication's name, not what it's for, telling people to ask their doctor for more. Special guest Terry O'Reilly, host of CBC's Under the Influence, says it can result in bad ads that turn people off, while pharmaceutical policy expert Barbara Mintzes says reminder ads can do more harm than good.

A first-of-its-kind medical school, part of Queen's University in Ontario, is recruiting and training students with the sole intention of graduating family doctors. But can it prepare them for the daily realities of the job?

Every two weeks, tenants of a Toronto Community Housing high-rise benefit from an on-site food bank. It's run by an embedded healthcare team, to build trust and get people the help they desperately need.

A behind-the-scenes chat about the making of the CBC collaboration "Overheated" where White Coat, Black Art, What on Earth, and Quirks and Quarks explore how heat is affecting our health, our communities and our ecosystems.

How far would you go to test your body in extreme heat? Ironworker apprentice Britnee Miazek travels hundreds of kilometres to Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario for a gruelling experiment to see how her body deals with high temperatures. She wants to find out why she stopped getting her period while working in sweltering conditions on a coke oven. Researchers are hoping to find answers for Britnee, and understand more about the long-term health effects of working in an increasingly hot environment. This episode is part of a CBC collaboration called "Overheated" where White Coat, Black Art, What on Earth, and Quirks and Quarks explore how heat is affecting our health, our cities and our ecosystems.