Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Drills And Exercises: The Way To Disaster Preparedness, Vivian C. Mcalister

Vivian C. McAlister

Catastrophes, natural or man-made, are very rare events in the life of hospitals in the developed world. None of the hospitals that coped with well known recent events such as Hurricane Katrina or the Madrid bombings had actually experienced or prepared for such an occurrence. A mass casualty incident (MCI), sometimes called “MASCAL,” is a situation in which a hospital receiving multiple casualties does not have the resources to deal with the patients simultaneously. Bottlenecks may occur at any point from the trauma bays to the point of discharge. There are 2 phases in which hospitals fail to cope. In …

Mass Casualty Training Exercise At The Canadian Surgery Forum

Vivian C. McAlister

On September 18, 2011 second year Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry students helped run the first mass casualty training exercise, directed by Dr. Vivian McAlister, Division of General Surgery, at the Canadian Surgery Forum held this year at the London Convention Centre.

Waiting For Liver Transplantation In Canada: Waitlist History 2000--2004 And Sensitivity Analysis For The Future., David Stanford, Elizabeth Renouf, Vivian C. Mcalister

Vivian C. McAlister

Report Of The Global Health Task Force, Vivian C. Mcalister

Vivian C. McAlister

The mandate of the Global Health Task Force was to advise the Dean regarding the development of Global Health at SSMD by broadly analyzing Global and international Health activities, within SSMD at The University of Western Ontario and in other Canadian universities, in order to make recommendations with respect to scope, coordinating structure, required administrative support, existing and potential academic activity and placement within the formal undergraduate curriculum for medical and dental students, as well as elective offerings and volunteer opportunities that may also involve students from professional programs within the Faculty of Health Sciences. The Task Force reviewed structures …

"Body Contouring After Massive Weight Loss," Edited By A. Aly., Vivian C. Mcalister

Vivian C. McAlister

Nowhere is the failure of the health care system, as currently managed, more evident than in the surgical care of obesity. A marked contrast has emerged between surgery in the United States and Canada for these patients. It is not clear whether the reluctance to supply surgical services in Canada is due to a bias in favour of “more deserving” patients or whether the considerably higher rate of obesity surgery in the US is due to the excesses of private enterprise. Governments have acknowledged that an element of the former proposition is true by referring obese patients to centres in …

Sacred Disease Of Our Times: Failure Of The Infectious Disease Model Of Spongiform Encephalopathy, Vivian Mcalister

Vivian C. McAlister

BACKGROUND: Public health and agricultural policy attempts to keep bovine spongiform encephalopathy out of North America using infectious disease containment policies. Inconsistencies of the infectious disease model as it applies to the spongiform encephalopathies may result in failure of these policies.

METHODS: Review of historical, political and scientific literature to determine the appropriate disease model of spongiform encephalopathy.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Spongiform encephalopathy has always occurred sporadically in man and other animals. Hippocrates may have described it in goats and cattle. Transmission of spongiform encephalopathy between individuals is too uncommon for it to be usefully considered an infection. Spongiform encephalopathy is …

Myopia Of Health-Care Reform Using Business Models, Macinnes Kenneth, Vivian C. Mcalister

Vivian C. McAlister

Background: Health-care institutions have looked to business for models to respond to the requirement for reform. This has changed the perspective of institutions that were founded on charitable principles, and managed with liberal employment policies and deficit budgeting. Using lesions from supply-side management, hospitals are fragmenting into independent programs with demands to balance budgets regardless of the source of cost.

Methods: Costs from the institution’s perspective are compared with those of the payer (province) using an example of a proposal to reduce costs in the surgical program by buying disposable drapes.

Results: The actual cost of disposable drapes bought from …