PLEASE NOTE: Some of the information in this blog post is now outdated. As of April 2012 we are no longer running the Acute Care Clinic. If your child or teen is experiencing an acute medical concern, please contact your family doctor. Well friends, the time has come for Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine to settle down for our long winter nap. And by that I mean that starting Friday, December 23rd, we’ll be closed for the holidays! Our doors will open again on January 3rd as the team embarks on a new year and a fresh new outlook for[Read more...]
Well, it’s that time of year again. We’ve written about RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) before and, as we now find ourselves in the midst of prime season for this nasty virus, it’s time for our annual RSV clinics! To recap: RSV is, in many ways, very similar to a really bad cold, and won’t cause much more trouble than one for most kids. However, some babies are considered “at-risk” for more severe health complications from RSV. While there is no way to prevent RSV, Health Canada provides palivizumab, medicine made up of passive antibodies that will help fight the virus,[Read more...]
The following is a guest post written by mom and QP community member, Jenn S. You can get in touch with her by following her on Twitter and be sure to check out her blog, Cleverly Disguised as Cake too! When I was little, I remember feeling as though summer would last forever, and Christmas would never come, and that the next school year was always just out of reach. Slowly, the years passed – I finished school, went out into the working world, moved out of my family home, and eventually decided to start a family. The speed of[Read more...]
Welcome to the new QuintePediatrics.com! What do you think? With all of the changes that have been happening (and will continue to happen over the next little while) here at QP, it only made sense that a new website was in order! Months in the making, we’re excited to finally be unveiling the first phase of our new look. Fresh, functional and interactive, our new site has been designed to enhance your QP experience. Easier to navigate with a more stream-lined look, we’ve also updated our service information and added new sections with specific resources for both patient families and[Read more...]
Last week we made a trip to Toronto to attend the 2011 OHA HealthAchieve conference. There were a lot of exciting reasons for us to be there: there were informative sessions to attend, Dr. Dempsey took part in an panel presentation on the role of social media in healthcare, and we were officially awarded the first ever B Social award from B Sharp Technologies! The B Social program was designed to provides cash incentives and other prizes to accelerate adoption and use of social media by Canadian healthcare organizations. Our proposal focused on our plans to introduce our own video[Read more...]
If you’ve been into the Acute Care Clinic over the past couple of days, you’ve probably noticed something different around the office. Normally when you come to see us at Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, you start your visit by checking in with Patty, our superstar administrative officer. For the next little while however, the routine is going to be a little bit different as Patty takes a few weeks to recover from the knee surgery she underwent last week. Not to worry, she’s ok! Still, we’re wishing her a smooth procedure and a speedy recovery. While Patty is healing[Read more...]
Autumn is always a busy time of year here at Quinte Pediatrics but the past week as been exceptionally exciting! Recently there has been a bit of buzz about how Quinte Pediatrics, as a health care practice, are using with social media. From this blog to Twitter and Facebook, we’ve been exploring new ways to connect with you, our patient families and other members of our community (both local and not!) It’s been a lot of fun so far and, if you caught Dr. Dempsey’s latest post, you know that there’s a lot more on the way. Last week we[Read more...]
I recently sat down to review progress-to-date on our project to fully integrate tools of social media into our way of practicing medicine at Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Our goal is to maximize our ability to communicate with our patients and our community on every level, using the tool most appropriate to the patient and issue at hand. I started by listing the various tools, and their uses in the past several months here. 1. Face to face – still the foundation of health care. There is no substitute for direct conversation with, and assessment of, our patients. The[Read more...]
Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine is proud to be one of the founding sponsors of the inaugural Saints Fall Classic charity football game at Quinte Secondary School. As specialists in child and youth medicine it is our aim to ensure that kids of all ages are able to enjoy the activities that they enjoy in a way that is safe and informed. Our main message for student athletes is simple: know your symptoms and respect your injury. When it comes to health and safety in high school sports, concussions tend to be a hot topic of discussion. In reality,[Read more...]
We are now into the fourth week of school and as happens every year the Quinte Pediatrics Acute Care Clinic has become busier. As our children return to the company of their friends and head into another year of learning they tend to pass on those nasty germs to each other as well as bring them home to their siblings. At this time of year, prevention is the best medicine. Teaching children to cough and sneeze into their sleeve and of course wash their hands before eating and after using the washroom, as well as after they sneeze or cough[Read more...]