Health committee  It might, Madam Chair, but if I could, I'll quickly turn this over to the other members. The reason I say that it might is that there's a bias introduced by the method of reporting. In other words, if the difficulty of reporting leads to under-reporting, it might introduce a bi

Health committee  You're correct. Just to give you a breakdown of that, of the 176 in which there was involvement—in other words, an adverse drug event occurred but it didn't cause the death—141 were natural. That is 141 out of 176. Twenty-eight were considered accidental. And I don't have the bre

Health committee  Yes, that's a possibility.

Health committee  Not necessarily. It would only be included if it caused an adverse drug event. For example, if a patient who is being palliated were to suffer respiratory failure because of an inadvertent overdose of narcotic and then died of the cancer the palliation was required for, that woul

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  I would say that the majority would be, and I think the key word used there is “unavoidable”, but not in the sense that the death was unavoidable.

Health committee  The event could have been avoided, but it didn't cause the death.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. And if I might just comment, it's very important that the committee understand that key fact. We do not want to have a chilling effect on physicians, particularly in end-of-life care, so they're afraid to prescribe appropriate palliative medication bec

Health committee  Madam Chair, I completely agree with Dr. Haggie's comments. I would say it's important that the committee recognize the temporal difference between peer-reviewed literature--expert use of drugs, which emerges very quickly--and regulatory response. There will be a gap at times.

Health committee  We have not had that discussion, no.

Health committee  I'm sorry, Dr. Bennett had a question, if I might answer, Madam Chair, on whether we rely on the physicians who are coroners to report. The answer is yes. However, the regional coroner reviews every case, and if we see a case where it is thought that an event should have been re

Health committee  Thank you. I'm glad you asked the question because I think I've left you with a mis-impression. There isn't a significant difference between the definitions as we put them versus Health Canada's. The wording might be slightly different, but the intent is very similar. Let me j

Health committee  Good morning, Madam Chair and members. I'm here representing Dr. Bonita Porter, the Chief Coroner for Ontario, who unfortunately couldn't be here and sends her regrets. What I'd like to do this morning is give the members a brief overview of death investigation in Canada and in