When are sleep aids indicated? What is the evidence behind melatonin? Why do sedatives put patients at risk for pneumonia?

Learn all this and more in this week’s episode of the CFP Podcast. Drs Sarah Fraser and Nick Pimlott interview two pharmacists about the topic of insomnia and deprescribing sedatives. Dr David Gardner is a pharmacist and the Director of Research in Community Psychiatry at Dalhousie University and Dr. Stephanie Lynch is a pharmacist with a Family Health Team in the Department of Family Medicine at Queen’s University in Belleville, Ontario.

In this podcast, the guests share their expertise on the topic of insomnia. Topics covered range from the evidence on the effectiveness of sedatives, important side effects of these drugs, and approaches to deprescribing them for your patients.

Below you can find links to two of the resources mentioned by the guests:

https://mysleepwell.ca/

https://healthsci.queensu.ca/opdes/cpd/educational-programs-opportunities/insomnia

Join CFP Editor, Dr. Nick Pimlott, and Deputy Editor, Dr. Sarah Fraser, as they interview Dr. Alan Peterkin on the release of the 25th anniversary edition of the book “Staying Human During Residency Training: How to Survive and Thrive after Medical School”, which he co-authored with Dr. Derek Puddester. They discuss topics ranging from the pervasiveness of burnout in medicine, the value of the medical humanities and narrative medicine, continuing to find meaning in medicine, and why the book, now in its seventh edition, remains a valuable resource on being and staying well, not just for residents, but for all physicians.

Dr. Peterkin is a Professor of psychiatry and family medicine at the University of Toronto, where he founded the Program in Health, Arts and Humanities. He is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian Psychiatric Association and Senior Fellow at Massey College, co-founder of Creating Space-Canada’s annual medical humanities meeting, a co-founder of the award-winning Canadian literary journal Ars Medica, and has been a humanities editorial consultant to CMAJ and Medical Humanities(BMJ). Links to Drs. Peterkin and Puddester’s book can be found at https://utorontopress.com/9781487555474/staying-human-during-residency-training/. More information about Dr. Peterkin’s work in narrative medicine can be found at https://narrativebasedmedicine.ca/.

Join CFP Deputy Editor, Dr. Sarah Fraser, and Editor, Dr. Nick Pimlott, as they interview Dr. Samantha Green and Dr. Ilona Hale about the concept of planetary health and the role that family doctors can and must play in ensuring it. Dr. Green is an academic family doctor in Toronto and the President-Elect of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE). Dr. Hale is a rural family physician in Kimberley, BC with a longstanding interest in and commitment to planetary health. The interview is based on a Commentary that Drs. Green and Hale co-authored with Dr. Meghan Davis and Dr. Jessica Nowlan entitled “Planetary health lens for primary care: considering environmental stability offers benefits to patients and providers” in the April issue of Canadian Family Physician.

Join CFP Editor Dr. Nick Pimlott as he interviews Dr. Alan Katz and Dr. Alex Singer, family physicians and family medicine researchers at the Max Rady College of Medicine, University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Dr. Katz is a Professor in the Departments of Community Health Sciences and Family Medicine. Dr. Singer is an Associate Professor and the Director for the Office of Research & Quality Improvement, and the Director of the Manitoba Primary Care Research Network. The interview is based on a Commentary article in the March issue of the journal entitled “The Future of Family Medicine in Canada”. Together they discuss four key ways to address the current crisis in Canadian family medicine to strengthen primary care.

In this episode of the podcast, Dr Sarah Fraser interviews Dr Shayna Watson about CBT for insomnia. They delve into the ins and outs of a non-pharmacologic approach to insomnia management, including the things you can do to help patients in your busy family medicine clinic.

Join Dr. Nick Pimlott and Dr. Sarah Fraser as they interview Dr. Iona Heath, the 2023 Dr. Ian McWhinney Lecturer at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University.

Dr. Heath’s McWhinney Lecture was published in the December 2023 issue of the journal. They discuss Dr. Heath’s discovery of Ian McWhinney’s “Quality of Mind” – the title of her lecture – when she first read his Textbook of Family Medicine as a young general practitioner, his lifelong influence on her thinking and practice, and how his ideas about the essential values of family medicine can help guide the profession through one of most challenging periods in its recent history.

Dr. Heath’s September 20th, 2023 Dr. Ian McWhinney Lecture can accessed here:

https://www.schulich.uwo.ca/familymedicine/about_us/dr_ian_mcwhinney_lecture_series/2023.html

The published lecture can be accessed here:

https://www.cfp.ca/content/cfp/69/12/821.full.pdf

Join Dr Nick Pimlott for this episode of the CFP Podcast as he interviews Alex Crawley and Amy Soubolsky from the Rx Files Academic Detailing Program in Saskatchewan about the management of difficult-to-treat depression in primary care. The interview is based on an article published in the November issue of the journal entitled “Thoughtful prescribing for difficult to treat depression”. Mr. Crawley and Ms. Soubolsky are co-authors of the article with their colleague Jessica Visentin. Together they discuss a case-based careful step wise approach to this challenging area of clinical practice.

Join Drs Nick Pimlott and Sarah Fraser as they co-host this CFP podcast on the new PEER Simplified Lipid Guideline: 2023 Update. They interview Dr Mike Kolber, lead author on the paper, which is published in October’s issue of the journal. They discuss the process of how he and his team developed these guidelines, and they take a deep dive into the evidence behind dyslipidemia screening, prevention, and treatment.

Read the guidelines in English: https://www.cfp.ca/content/69/10/675.

Access the guidelines in French: https://www.cfp.ca/content/69/10/e189.

Check out the systematic review that informed the guidelines: https://www.cfp.ca/content/69/10/701.