COACH: Canada’s Health Informatics Association recently honoured the palliative care physician, educator and researcher with its new Clinician Leadership Award. Nominated by Senator Sharon Carstairs, the award recognized his work with the Canadian Virtual Hospice and other innovative websites aimed at communicating with physicians, nurses, and families involved in palliative care.

It’s always gratifying to me when academic physicians combine passions –in this case palliative care and web development- and patients and the public wind up the winners.Mike,who taught himself web development, led a team in creating and designing the Virtual Hospice, a website that informs the public about terminal illness and end of life care, loss and grief. It’s a fascinating repository of information and support, and offers a unique feature that allows anyone to “Ask a Professional” a health-care question and links the public with health-care specialists.

In today’s technologically-driven world, communication channels are constantly evolving and it’s incumbent upon us as physicians to explore new avenues to better connect with the public, with patients and within our profession. Some 40 per cent of the questions posed to “Ask a Professional” come from health-care providers dealing with difficult or complex cases.

Another pioneering faculty member is Dr. Terry Klassen, Associate Dean, Academic and Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health, Faculty of Medicine and Director of Research, Manitoba Institute of Child Health.

He was recently awarded $1.6-M over four years by the federal government’s Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE) Knowledge Mobilization initiative for his Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids (TREKK) network project. It was one of three NCE projects announced by Minister Steven Fletcher on Bannatyne Campus November 18.
Terry’s research initiative is aimed at improving the emergency care of children in general emergency departments.

By collaborating with nation-wide emergency department physicians and families who seek care in those centres, University of Manitoba researchers will work with partners from the Universities of Calgary, Alberta and Ottawa to improve health outcomes and impact how children are treated and diagnosed in emergency departments.