CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne
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Advocates of euthanasia say clear rules outlining procedures to follow when a terminally ill patient requests assisted suicide would help doctors provide better care without fear of legal or professional recrimination. The Canadian-born medical director of a US-based right-to die organization made the comments during the recent annual meeting of Dying With Dignity, a Canadian group.
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To provide Canadian physicians with a standard definition of hypertension in pregnancy, recommendations for laboratory investigations and tests for the assessment and management of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, and a classification of such disorders. ⋯ Except for expert opinions and reviews solicited for this project, these recommendations need to be field tested and validated in Canada. Guidelines endorsed by the Canadian Hypertension Society and the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada.
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To describe Ontario emergency physicians' knowledge of colleagues' sexual involvement with patients and former patients, their own personal experience of such involvement, and their attitudes toward postvisit relationships. ⋯ Vague regulatory guidelines currently in place have failed to dispel confusion regarding what is acceptable social behaviour for physicians providing emergency care. Our results support the need for clarification, and suggest a basis for guidelines that would be acceptable to the emergency medical community: that an emergency visit should not form the basis for the initiation of personal or sexual relationships, yet neither should it preclude their development in nonmedical settings.
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To conduct a failure analysis of cervical cancer screening among women with invasive cervical cancer in Alberta. ⋯ Despite widespread use of opportunistic cervical screening, many women in Alberta are still not being screened adequately. In most cases women are being screened too infrequently or not at all. Self-reported screening histories are unreliable because many women may overestimate the number of smears. An organized approach to screening, as recommended by the National Workshop in Cervical Cancer Screening, may assist in reducing the incidence of invasive cervical cancer.