Doubling of Deaths among Sick Moms-To-Be Highlights Medication Safety in Pregnancy
August 26, 2013
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Dr. James Cave has been a family doctor for 20 years working in a rural practice in England. He’s editor in chief of the www.dtb.bmj.com. He talks about his life as a family doctor, his experience with family caregiving, and his work as Editor in Chief of the Bulletin. He summarizes the Bulletin’s editorial, ‘Doubling of deaths among sick mums-to-be amid poor evidence on drug safety in pregnancy’. He describes key trends in pregnancy and their implications for health during and after pregnancy. He discusses the importance of medications now and in the future for maintaining health during pregnancy and the challenges that arise with their use especially as learned from the history of medications during pregnancy. He says what more he wants to do via the Drug & Therapeutics Bulletin and to see done by the medical profession to advance healthcare during pregnancy, and shares his message for women about healthcare during pregnancy.
Family Caregivers Unite!
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Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.