4 things you’ll learn about Canadian health care from CBC’s Keeping Canada Alive
Think you know Canadian health care? We talk about our pride in universal care, we debate the downfalls of our system during election season, but for most of us, our knowledge of Canadian health care is limited to our own personal or family experience with the system.
But now, CBC is offering a deeper look into Canadian health care. Their new show, Keeping Canada Alive, is a factual six-part series that tells stories of patients and health care providers across the country—all filmed within a single 24-hour period. Though only parts of patients’ stories can be told in a day, the show’s creators use those particularly powerful medical moments to tell their larger stories, then follow up with epilogues at the end of the episodes, as well as a companion website that has additional footage and continues the conversation online.
“Watching it is like watching a good medical drama, but the people in these stories are real,” says the show’s creative producer Diana Bodnar. We spoke to her about some of the most remarkable moments in the show and the lessons that Canadians can learn about their health care from tuning in.
1. The health care system doesn’t end at the hospital.
Not only are there tons of health care providers who work in other clinics (nurse practitioners, occupational therapists, midwives, etc.), family members actually take on a huge portion of health-related caregiving in Canada. In fact, through the story of a 73-year-old woman caring for her husband, viewers of the show learn that family caregivers in Canada will spend more than one million hours looking after someone who has a cognitive impairment like dementia. Bodnar says that one of the most challenging parts of creating the show was how to decide which stories to tell, because there is no clear line where health care ends and begins.
2. Health care is more than just medicine.
Oftentimes the care that patients receive is about way more than a prescription or surgery. In a story on the companion site, for example, Bodnar says they explore the benefits of skin-to-skin contact in a neo-natal unit. “There is a great program in Winnipeg for volunteers to cuddle premature babies whose parents need to leave them in the unit to get stronger. That can reduce the stress of medication and even reduce hospital stays,” she explains.
3. Care isn’t equal everywhere.
This is an issue that has come up again and again, but there’s something fresh about seeing the issue unfold in real time. Not only does health care vary amongst provinces, but among individual communities. In Keeping Canada Alive, you’ll see people in remote northern communities struggling to access health care and First Nations communities facing a disproportionate problem with diabetes, but you’ll also see solutions to some localized problems, like Rosie, the medical robot, in Labrador. “In some remote communities where they don’t staff full-time medical doctors, they’re able to connect up to the robot, so when nurses do a test, a doctor can see the patient in a screen, see the results of the test and examine the patient remotely,” says Bodnar.
4. Our health innovations are astounding.
If a medical robot isn’t enough proof of that, you’ll also see a mechanical heart, new laser treatments that improve the appearance and comfort of burn scars, and a tool that allows a neurosurgeon to detect and remove cancer cells. “There is a lot of innovation,” says Bodnar, “but it is told in the context of human stories.”
Catch Keeping Canada Alive Sunday nights at 9 and rewatch the first episode Oct. 9 at 9 p.m. EDT, or check out the website for more great stories.
(Photography: Courtesy CBC)