reports from council
• approval of a multilingual educational brochure and consultation on a draft Rights and
Responsibilities document.
An in-depth report is on page 23.
Planning for and Providing Quality
End-of-Life Care Policy
Council has approved a policy that sets out
the College’s expectations of physicians regarding quality care at the end of life.
The Planning for and Providing Quality
End-of-Care policy reflects feedback heard
during the consultation, with revisions on
the topics of advance care planning, palliative
care, life-saving and life-sustaining treatment,
euthanasia and assisted suicide, and managing
conflicts.
An article about the policy is on page 35.
The revised policy is inserted at page 19.
Blood Borne Viruses – Draft policy
out for consultation
A draft policy that sets expectations for physicians who perform or assist in performing
exposure prone procedures with respect to
reducing the risk of acquiring or transmitting
16
Dialogue Issue 3, 2015
Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV is now out
for consultation.
The most significant proposed change in the
draft policy is with respect to routine testing.
The draft policy changes the requirement for
HIV testing and HCV testing from every year
to every three years.
It strongly recommends that physicians be
immunized for HBV and tested to confirm
the presence of an effective antibody response.
Annual testing for HBV is only required for
those physicians who have not been confirmed
immune to HBV.
An article about the draft policy is on page 38.
Block Fees and Uninsured Services –
Preliminary Consultation
We are inviting comments on the current
Block Fees and Uninsured Services policy at
this early stage of the review process to help determine what policy changes may be required.
Once a revised draft policy has been developed,
we will hold a second consultation to invite
feedback on the draft before it is considered
for final approval by College Council. The
deadline to provide feedback is November 20,
2015.