Canadian PR

[wendypoh]

Woman spends 36 hours in hallway after surgery

Stephanie Mercier
The Canadian Press
Mar 3, 2011

A Vancouver woman said she had to spend 36 hours in a busy hallway following major surgery at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, B.C.

Joanne, who spoke to CBC News on the condition that her surname not be used, also says that she wants to complain about her treatment, but the Fraser Health Authority hasn't returned her calls.

The hospital made national headlines earlier this week when the facility's emergency room became so overcrowded that ER staff had to take over a Tim Hortons restaurant in the hospital for the extra room to treat patients.

The middle-aged woman said she had pancreatic surgery Feb. 25 and had to begin her recovery behind privacy screens in a bed in a hospital hallway for a day and a half because no rooms were available.

"I was promised that I would get equal care to those that were in the other rooms but that was not so," she said.

Joanne said she was in excruciating pain, but there was no way to call a nurse.

"I had to use my cellphone to call the main desk at Royal Columbian Hospital to be transferred to the nursing station to get my nurse to come and find me," she said.

Joanne called her treatment "unacceptable."

"I was put in a very high traffic area behind some fabric dividers, and left basically. I was checked on every few hours."

Fraser Health's vice-president of clinical operations, Arden Krystal, said the hospital tries to avoid putting acute care patients in hallway beds, but admitted Thursday that staff sometimes have no other option.

"As we've become more space-challenged, when we do get surges of patients, it has become common practice to put patients in the hallway," Krystal said.

© Copyright (c) The Canadian Press

 

[wendypoh]

Nurse disgraced in U.S. working in Canada

Mar 9, 2011
The Canadian Press

A Canadian woman whose California nursing licence was revoked over "gross negligence" is working at a Greater Toronto Area hospital.

Rose McKenzie, 38, of Mississauga had her California nursing licence revoked in 2008 after being accused of overmedicating and failing to monitor a patient at California's UCSF Medical Center following a successful, routine neck surgery. She was a temp nurse employed through American Mobile Nurses Inc. at the time.

The patient, Spencer Sullivan, stopped breathing Dec. 27, 2001, due in part to the overdose, which caused brain damage and left him quadriplegic. Less than a year after the incident, McKenzie moved back to Canada and began working at the Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital.

But it wasn't until recently that the Ontario nursing regulatory body began examining McKenzie's past.

No alert system

The case raises troubling questions about the lack of information sharing between regulatory nursing bodies across Canada and abroad.

No formal mechanism exists to require nursing boards in one jurisdiction to alert other jurisdictions about nurses they have disciplined. Nurses in Ontario, for example, are expected to report any issues themselves.

There were several times when McKenzie might have notified Ontario's College of Nurses over the past decade, including during a civil lawsuit and a disciplinary hearing in the U.S. Neither was under way when McKenzie began working at the Oakville hospital in 2002.

In 2005, a $6-million civil lawsuit, settled outside court, ascribed McKenzie with 40 per cent of the cost — or $2.4 million — for Sullivan's botched care.

In 2008, California's Board of Registered Nursing revoked McKenzie's nursing licence after ruling that she had "engaged in gross negligence" in her care of Sullivan. The decision was later posted online.

In his lawsuit, Sullivan's lawyer alleged that among McKenzie's missteps made during about 10 hours of post-surgery care starting the evening of Dec. 26, 2001, were:

• Overmedicating the patient by administering drugs ordered by two separate doctors without question.

• Failing to regularly check on him as instructed, leaving hours between visits.

• Failing to chart any of her activities with Sullivan until the following day. McKenzie says she made notes on scraps of paper instead of on the chart.

• Failing, along with another nurse, to respond quickly enough when Sullivan stopped breathing.

"Nurse McKenzie's care and treatment fell below accepted standards of care for a nurse," said Sullivan's lawyer Dan Hodes. "It did. There's no question about that."

Disciplinary hearing to be held

Last July, the College of Nurses of Ontario charged McKenzie with failing to "provide complete and accurate information to the college" when she was found to have committed professional misconduct in another jurisdiction. A disciplinary hearing is scheduled for May 6.

Disciplinary hearings can result in a reprimand, fine, suspension or restriction in practice or even revocation of licence.

The Oakville hospital said McKenzie is not currently working directly with patients, but wouldn't say when that began.

Hodes says Sullivan, 51, was a "high functioning, vibrant, charismatic guy" who was a nurse himself and ran a successful temp agency similar to the one that employed McKenzie. "And now he's a profoundly brain injured quadriplegic."

"He was let down by his profession," said Hodes. "And he knows that."

Sullivan's parents, Bill and Carol, both in their mid-70s, moved from their retirement home in Atlanta into a house with Sullivan in Laguna Hills, Calif., shortly after the incident and have been taking care of him ever since.

"The nurse was the first line of defence," said father Bill Sullivan. "She failed her assignment."

Spencer Sullivan, who can speak but suffers from short-term memory loss, says he's grateful to be alive. But, he adds, if he could deliver one message to McKenzie, it would be: "Tell her I said 'Hello.' And 'Go to hell.' That's where I think she belongs."

System 'completely inadequate'

Halton Healthcare Services, which oversees the Oakville hospital where McKenzie works, said in a letter that all its employees are "vetted through a detailed, rigorous application and screening process."

The letter notes, however, that it's the college's role to ensure registered nurses meet requirements to work in Ontario.

Ontario's College of Nurses said in a written statement that its members are required to self-report within 30 days about any findings of guilt of an offence, professional negligence or malpractice and if any such proceedings are underway.

But the college also acknowledged that the fact "a nurse is name in a civil lawsuit does not have to be reported" if it's settled out of court, as was the case with McKenzie.

Nurses are required to answer questions about such issues on a "Self-reporting Form " filled out during the annual renewal of their licence.

In Canada, there is no centralized system for provincial nursing boards to check a nurse's status in other jurisdictions.

"Each jurisdiction has different legislation and rules about what information is made public," Ontario's college of nurses communications manager, Deborah Jones, wrote in an email. "Some provinces are required by legislation to send this information, others are not."

Michael McBane, national co-ordinator of the advocacy group, Canadian Health Coalition, said reliance on self-reporting is "completely inadequate."

"It's not acceptable in this day and age with this kind of technology to not to be sharing information when it's such critical information," said McBane.

© Copyright (c) The Canadian Press

 

[wendypoh]

 

[wendypoh]

Why some Chinese immigrants head home

By Douglas Todd
Vancouver Sun
February 25, 2011

They tend to be educated, with almost one out of four recent arrivals holding PhDs.

Many seek a better lifestyle in Canada, revelling in its clear blue skies rather than grey pollution.

Most are middle-class or wealthy, able to afford big Metro Vancouver houses and be treated as "VIPs" by jewellers and automobile sales staff.

Many, however, are having trouble finding decent employment in Canada. As a result, a strong minority are returning to where they came from.

Such are the joys and pains of Metro Vancouver’s roughly 400,000 ethnic Chinese residents — who together make up one-fifth of the city’s population.

The ups and downs of their lives are contained in a research paper by Langara College Asian studies instructor Li Yu, who studied in Asia before earning his PhD at the University of B.C. His paper was published in the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association.

Yu’s frank report, titled "An Empirical Study of Recent Mainland Chinese Migration to Vancouver", is a gold mine of combining data from Statistics Canada with on-the-ground research. Yu makes it clear that the city’s ethnic Chinese have become a force in marketing, trade, education and culture.

Three out of four Chinese-Canadians were born outside Canada. With many struggling to learn English, Yu says most rely on a host of Chinese-language TV stations, newspapers, websites, cultural and religious groups.

The vast majority arriving in Metro Vancouver in the past decade have been from mainland China, Yu says. More than 10,000 a year are flying into the city from the world’s most populous country.

That rate is more than four times faster than immigrants have been coming from the combination of both Taiwan and Hong Kong, which were the dominant sources of Chinese newcomers to B.C. until the late 1990s.

Why the relatively sudden influx of mainland Chinese to this West Coast metropolis (in numbers almost equal to that of Toronto)?

In part it’s because China began in the mid-’90s to allow its educated, middle-class citizens to emigrate.

It has led to a brain-gain for Canada, with a remarkable one out of four recent Chinese migrants holding PhDs (compared to six per cent of immigrants from the U.S.).

In addition, 70 per cent of immigrants to B.C. from China have the skills or wealth to apply as "economic" or "investment class" immigrants.

Yu says this new cohort of Chinese-Canadians mainly seek "a higher quality of life and a much better natural and social environment than that which exists in China."

In one-on-one interviews, Yu found recent immigrants from China believe that Canadians are generally more fair, ethical and respectful of the law than people in their homeland.

Some Chinese immigrants seek a safe haven in Canada. Yu says many acknowledge they’re seeking economic security, treating Canada as a "backup plan" in case their fortunes are lost in China.

Many recent immigrants from China also told Yu they "disliked showy, dirty and noisy cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen."

One mother was entranced by the clean environment, saying:

"I like the blue sky and white clouds of Vancouver. In my home city in China the sky is always grey. Once when my eight-year-old son saw a large piece of white cloud flying over his head, he was startled."

However, things don’t always work out for Chinese immigrants to Metro Vancouver.

Many newcomers are failing to find work as rewarding as the work they can obtain in booming China.

As a result, many are having to become taikong families, with one spouse, typically the husband, returning to work in China to earn a stable income.

"The spouse working in China normally visits Vancouver once or twice a year. In many cases the wife will stay in Canada for three or four years, waiting for Canadian citizenships," Yu writes, adding that the gap years are often jokingly called "sitting in immigration jail."

After several years of enduring split family situations in Canada, Yu says many wives "then go back to China to join their husbands. The children, however, remain in Vancouver and continue their education."

In total, Yu found one-third of young-to-middle-aged immigrants from China end up leaving Canada forever.

As a result, if China continues to improve its social and environmental conditions, Yu predicts the number applying to come to Canada will eventually decline.

 

[wendypoh]

Mayor admits many Vancouver buildings vulnerable

Darcy Wintonyk
The Canadian Press
March 11 2011

Older buildings in Vancouver would be vulnerable to an earthquake similar to the 8.9-magnitude quake that struck Japan, the city's mayor said Friday.

While Vancouver and the province of B.C. have invested millions of dollars in seismic upgrades for bridges, schools and public buildings, Mayor Gregor Robertson admits that nothing has been done to reinforce private buildings against the potentially disastrous effects of a major natural disaster.

"It is certainly a concern given the amount of buildings that are at risk," Robertson told CTV News Friday afternoon.

A prominent earthquake expert sounded the alarm about the vulnerability of private apartment and office towers in B.C. after the quake, saying authorities should start looking at "the many" apartment and office buildings that would likely sway and collapse.

"There's no process in place whatsoever to look at those occupied buildings. That's a major problem," Perry Adebar of the University of B.C. Earthquake Lab told ctvbc.ca in a telephone interview.

With its long history of major quakes, Adebar says Japan has made major improvements in its building code to ensure they will be seismically sound. But B.C. hasn't.

"We don't have the advantage of having a history of significant earthquakes that have taught us the lessons we need to know to keep us safe," he said.

Adebar says it's not the tallest buildings that are the most at risk here, but rather the ones that were constructed by a single engineer and weren't subject to a peer review.

Robertson says many buildings in Vancouver were built before new construction codes were introduced, and the city has "real questions" about what to do to update codes.

"With the private buildings built under old building codes there are real vulnerabilities there," he said.

Adebar believes the biggest problem is that no one is required to examine existing privately-owned buildings to make sure they are earthquake-ready.

The only time these buildings will have an inspection is if they are to be converted into condominiums or change occupancy.

"It's rare," Adebar said.

West Coast building standards

It's not just old buildings that are vulnerable, says Adebar. The way modern buildings are constructed in B.C.'s earthquake zones may also put us at a major risk.

Studying the effects of the 2009 Megaquake in Chile, Adebar found that many of the buildings that were most affected were newer apartment and office towers reinforced with thinner, six-inch concrete walls for support.

B.C. has nearly identical building codes. The thinner walls have become popular in both Chile and North America because they allow for additional parking in underground parkades -- where buildings need to be their strongest.

The results prompted him to call for urgent changes to the building code in British Columbia.

He says buildings built on flood plains and on sandy soils, similar to Richmond, south of Vancouver, had the biggest problems in Chile.

"Chile is a very modern country and we have six-inch walls just like this in Canada," he said.

Lessons learned

Ken Elwood, an engineer with the UBC Earthquake Lab, spent three months in Japan in 2009 studying its building designs and says the country made great strides to minimize damage by retrofitting old buildings.

Elwood says the only way British Columbia will survive a major quake is to do the same thing.

"We need to learn as much as we can about the damage out there and bring it back here to improve our own structures," he said.

He says there's no way to completely stop a building from becoming damaged in an earthquake, but in cases like Japan, that's not the goal.

"The most important thing is life safety – that people can leave the buildings safely," he said.

Not just the "big one"

Experts say it isn't just "the big one" that would hurt Canada's West Coast.

Because the length of the subduction zone near British Columbia is much larger than other countries, say Chile's, a large quake has the capacity to shake the earth for a longer time.

That means a quake could have a smaller magnitude and cause a lot more damage.

"One that has a short span could be a lot more damaging – look at Christchurch," Adebar says, referencing the New Zealand 6.3-magnitude quake that killed 166 people last month.

Also important is how close the quake hits to the West Coast. A quake with a shorter duration that hits closer to Vancouver could be the most devastating, Adebar says.

 

[exSINgaporean]

North is a dead cold winter, the ducks will surely die and yet they fly north.

Just like those who jumped down from the World Trade Centre.....stay they will be burnt to death, jump down sure die but better to sure die quick then to be roasted sl...ow.....l....y.

Yea, it could be. Watch out to see whether fish, whales, sharks swim to shore and how the dogs and cow make quick movements and loud noise......they have the sixth sense.

It could be the BIG one!

Just a follow up to two months ago.....those birds knew two months ahead all those earthquake activies in New Zealand and Japan.

I think the next BIG one could be around the corner for the West Coast of USA and B.C....within these 2 to 3 months! The sea wall in the Richmond area could burst and thousands can be killed. Pray I am WRONG this time around.

 

[exSINgaporean]

North is a dead cold winter, the ducks will surely die and yet they fly north.

Just like those who jumped down from the World Trade Centre.....stay they will be burnt to death, jump down sure die but better to sure die quick then to be roasted sl...ow.....l....y.

Yea, it could be. Watch out to see whether fish, whales, sharks swim to shore and how the dogs and cow make quick movements and loud noise......they have the sixth sense.

It could be the BIG one!

Just a follow up to two months ago.....those birds knew two months ahead all those earthquake activies in New Zealand and Japan.

I think the next BIG one could be around the corner for the West Coast of USA and B.C....within these 2 to 3 months! The sea wall in the Richmond area could burst and thousands can be killed. Pray I am WRONG this time around.

 

[nayr69sg]

It has been kinda quiet in the Canada thread eh?

Moneysense magazine published a ranking of Canadian places to live.

http://list.moneysense.ca/rankings/best-places-to-live/2011/Default.aspx?sp2=1&sc1=0&d1=a

http://list.moneysense.ca/rankings/best-places-to-live/2011/Default.aspx?sp2=1&sc1=0&d1=a

Edmonton is ranked 8th. Winnipeg 10th. Calgary 16th.

Vancouver is ranked 29th.

Quite surprising.

 

[Hock]

Property prices in Edmonton like Humpty Dumpty have a great fall.

 

[cass888]

Queens City (aka Kingston 4th)? Western-Fanshaw City (aka London) 14th? Toronto not listed and Missisaga/Oakville 30th and 32th???

Are these rankings for real?

It has been kinda quiet in the Canada thread eh?

Moneysense magazine published a ranking of Canadian places to live.

http://list.moneysense.ca/rankings/best-places-to-live/2011/Default.aspx?sp2=1&sc1=0&d1=a

http://list.moneysense.ca/rankings/best-places-to-live/2011/Default.aspx?sp2=1&sc1=0&d1=a

Edmonton is ranked 8th. Winnipeg 10th. Calgary 16th.

Vancouver is ranked 29th.

Quite surprising.

 

[nayr69sg]

Maozedong, your PM box is full so I cannot send you any messages. Please clear your inbox. hear from you again,

 

[maozedong]

ok cleared thank u doctor

 

[Hock]

Canada ranked second-happiest country in the world

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/canada-ranked-second-happiest-country-world-194344661.html

 

[starstar]

Hi everyone,

A previous post in this thread mentioned about choosing a cheapest home in a good neighborhood, does anyone know of good neighborhoods in Edmonton?

To wendy, thanks for all the clippings, this will keep the weak and the cowards away which is exactly what the PAP had wanted.

 

[nayr69sg]

I have been living in Edmonton since last July.

I live in the South West region. There are a couple of other ex-Singaporeans living in this area as well.

What is your definition of "good neighborhoods"?

Are you coming to Edmonton? I just heard that another Singapore family just migrated to Edmonton earlier this month.

 

[starstar]

Hi nayr69sg and everyone, how are the prices of houses in South West region? When you first came over, do you rent, or simply buy an affordable mobile house which I had seen in some Canadian realtors' websites, or just purchase an apartment and then change to a landed residence later on?

And yeah, what is your take on a mobile home?

Good neighbourhood, at the moment, to a single guy like me would be places with less complicated people and low crimes as I'll be living alone and out most of the time.

I am making a trip over next year's June for a short visit and hopefully some kind souls would spare me 1-2 days to show me all the bad sides of Canada so that I can be prepared when I go over in 2013. It's 2011 now and must say it's far-fetched though.

 

[Hock]

Rent first, buy later. Many ex-Sinkies who bought recently are licking their wounds.

 

[Leongsam]

Rent first, buy later. Many ex-Sinkies who bought recently are licking their wounds.

Why would buying a house to live in cause any wounds?

 

[nayr69sg]

Hi star,

If you are single, I think you might want to consider renting.

Do you really need to buy a place? And what kind of housing are you looking for? A single family home is probably too big for a single guy. Maybe a condo or townhouse but the management fees are quite high. What's your objective?

Mobile homes....sorry I don't know much about that but I don't know anyone who lives in something like that.

Property prices in Edmonton have softened since the peak in 2008. It is no where as crazy as in Vancouver though. Housing affordability index for Edmonton is one of the best in Canada.

I still think you should rent to begin with until you get a job etc.

It is possible to get a mortgage without having any Canadian Credit history and any Canadian income or job. I know. I did it. So that should not be a stumbling block anymore. But as Hock pointed out, you have to be careful what property you are buying.

Rent first would be good advice especially since you are single and not sure of your future plans. Who knows you might meet someone who comes from Calgary or Toronto and end up moving there?

 

[nayr69sg]

Here's a blog that might be of interest to you with regards to Edmonton properties.

http://www.edmontonrealestateblog.com/