Check out our brand new look!
Hello friends and welcome to the new look of Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine!
This year we mark ten years in the Quinte region. That’s ten years since we first opened the doors of the ‘Ouch!’ Clinic and ten years of constantly striving to deliver the kind of response to the health care needs of our kids and teens that they deserve.
Just like our patients, we’ve done a lot of growing in the last ten years. Our services have been evolving to meet the ever changing needs of our patients.
To mark these ten years and to celebrate our evolution in services, we’re rolling out a brand new look here at Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine! We’re pretty excited about it and we’d love to hear what you think too!
With this new look also comes a couple of other new adventures for us. The first is the introduction of our Sport Medicine and Healthy Living Clinic. We’ve also finally launched our much anticipated Youtube channel! Check out our first video (starring Dr. Dempsey!) above.
From everyone here at QPAM, we want to thank each and every one of you for being a part of these past ten amazing years and we look forward to continuing to serve you and our community for years to come!
May events to help kids & families in our community!
Looking for events in the community that will give you the chance to have some fun AND give back to the kids and families in our community? We’ve got three right here for you!
Pennzoil & Petro-Canada Customer Appreciation Event for BGHF
Belleville’s Pennzoil & Petro-Canada team is spreading the love from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. today, May 10th, with a customer appreciation event and fundraiser on behalf of the Belleville General Hospital Foundation. Head over to their Dundas Street location for a free BBQ, discounts on car washes and oil changes and enter to win some great prizes too! Click here for more information.
Walk a Mile in Her Shoes Quinte
Coming into its second year locally, this spectacular event will see men from across our community strutting their stuff (in heels no less!) to help put an end to violence against women and raise money for the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation and the Three Oaks Foundation. While the gents will be the ones doing the walk, there will be plenty of activities for the whole family this Saturday, May 12th at the Empire Square, downtown Belleville. Check out the official website for all of the details!
TELUS Walk to Cure Juvenile Diabetes
On May 26th, get the whole family together to have some fun and raise money to help research, treat and prevent Type 1 diabetes in Canada. Get outside, get moving and have some fun for an important cause. To register your family or team, head over to the JDRF website.
Local health-related events to check out this weekend!
Looking for something to do this weekend? This weekend is shaping up to be a busy one around the Quinte area with a few great health-related events for you and your family to enjoy.
Come as You Are for Autism
image by Autism Dog Services Inc.
This Sunday head down to Prince Edward Country and show your support for a really valuable service while enjoying entertainment, prizes and more! Money raised will go toward Autism Dog Services, an organization that provides service dogs to children with autism and other related disorders.
When and where:
1 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Sunday, April 29th
Casa-Dea Estate Winery, Wellington
Tickets:
$30 per person
Available at:
Thompson Tents, 411 Dundas St E, Belleville
Bloom & Events, 124 Main St, Unit 101, Picton
Or contact Lynette Cooper at 416-884-9700/lynnette@autismdogservices.ca
The Healthy Living Expo
Come check out booths, demonstrations and presentations covering all things health and wellness all weekend! Make sure you stop by centre stage on Saturday, when Dr. Dempsey will be answering your health care questions as part of ‘Ask the Doctors’ panel at 1 p.m! Check out the official website for more information.
When and where:
9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Saturday, April 28th and 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Sunday, April 29th
Quinte Sports and Wellness Centre, Wally Dever Arena
Tickets:
$5 per day or $8 weekend pass (and kids 12 and under get in for FREE!)
What BGH’s new Urgent Pediatric Consultation Clinic means for our ACC
Beginning on April 30th, 2012, Belleville General Hospital will launch an Urgent Pediatric Consultation Clinic for pediatric patients experiencing acute medical concerns which require assessment by a pediatrician. This Urgent Pediatric Consultation Clinic will allow its patients to be referred to the pediatrician on-call by the emergency room doctor.
In response to the Hospital’s decision, our Acute Care Clinic here at Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine will be going on a hiatus at the end of this month while the Urgent Pediatric Consultation Clinic is being rolled out.
The Acute Care Clinic originally got started as a response to what we saw as being an unmet need here in the Quinte region, back when family doctors were hard to come by. With the Hospital now taking on their Urgent Pediatric Consultation Clinic project, and with more family physicians now accepting patients, we’ll begin shifting our focusing toward tackling other unmet pediatric needs within the community and will be giving more time to our pillar services: Medical Consultations and our Special Kids, Special Care clinics.
While the ACC will be closed, you’ll still be able to count on us to answer your questions and provide helpful and trusted kid’s and teen’s health information on our website, Facebook and Twitter pages. If you’re looking for more information on the Urgent Pediatric Consultation Clinic, contact Belleville General Hospital. If you’re in need of a family physician, the Ministry of Health has established Health Care Connect to connect you with local family physicians accepting new patients.
Rest assured – QPAM isn’t leaving! We’re just growing and we’ve some exciting new service details coming down the pipeline in the next week or two so stay tuned!
Working with our community: A guest post by our co-op student, Kristen!
At Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine we believe that healthy kids energize our community, and we’re passionate about working with that community to make it a great place for our kids and teens. Each academic year, we work with local area high schools and take on a co-op student for work placement at our offices. This year we’ve been working with Kristen, who took the time to write a blog post about her experiences so far. Take a look!
I’m from Moira Secondary School and I come to Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine one day a week on job placement to learn new job skills. Some new skills I do are measure and weigh children from infants to young teens. To kill germs I disinfect toys, chairs and beds as well as help clean the clinic by cleaning window and sweeping floors. I dispose of old medicine and stock shelves with new medicine. I decorate the clinic for special events and holidays. I like to do this so that children and parents get in the spirit and become happy and cheerful. I colour with the children to keep them busy. A new skill I am learning is filing medical papers. I helped filing last year’s files and with setting up for the New Year.
I am really glad to have the opportunity to do a placement at the clinic. I have learned new skills and am developing confidence in working with other people and children.
Thank you.
Kristen
Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine heads to PodCamp Toronto!
Session panelists Jackie Hickey, Sara Hamil, Kathy Kastner and Colleen Young
This past weekend, Sara, our director of social media and communications, took a road trip to Toronto to attend PodCamp 2012 – an “un-conference” focusing on all things social media. Aside from attending an array of informative and inspiring sessions, she also participated in a panel for one entitled, “Sex, Drugs, Dying and Living: How social networks help with tricky and taboo health topics”. It was a great experience full of engaging discussion and thought-provoking idea-sharing.
Sara, along with fellow panelists, Colleen Young, Jackie Hickey and Kathy Kastner spent the hour talking about the powerful role that social media has in health care to a room full of inquisitive participants. It didn’t take long for the questions to start coming, leading to some great discussion, not only among the panelists but also within the crowd. Popular topics included how to find reliable healthcare resources online, the ways in which online social networks can help connect patients and caregivers to support and information, and how we as health care “consumers” can use social media tools to begin collaborating with our health care practitioners.
It was a great experience and, hopefully, it was as inspiring for the audience as it was for us as panelists! Special thank go out to our moderator, Shelley Pringle, our live tweeter, Dave Bourne and of course, to everyone that sat in on our session! Thanks for a great experience and here’s to PodCamp 2013!
Making sense of teething
In the world of pediatrics, each day is an adventure. The human body is complex and wonderful. Many medical problems are based on something easily identified. Ear infections and appendicitis come to mind. But there is more than enough complexity to the body to make the obvious, well, less obvious. An ear infection may be only a surface finding of something more complicated. Appendicitis may be so much more, or less, than appendicitis.
At Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, we are often asked whether teething in infants and toddlers may cause fever, rash, diarrhea or other symptoms that look like infection. Just as often, parents bring their young one to the office with certain signs of infection, only to discover the young one does not actually have an ear infection, or virus, or other infection.
How to make sense of teething? Here’s what the medical literature has to say. This is taken from the journal Pediatrics, one of the pre-eminent publications in the world of pediatrics:
Pediatrics Vol. 105 No. 4 April 1, 2000, pp. 747 -752
“The strongest associated symptoms (of teething) were biting, drooling, gum-rubbing, irritability, and sucking, which occurred with greater frequency during the 4 days before and up to 3 days after a tooth emergence.
Symptoms that increased in frequency only on the same day and or a day or 2 before a tooth emergence included decreased appetite for solids, wakefulness, ear-rubbing, facial rash, and abnormal temperature.
Symptoms that showed no significant associations with teething were decreased appetite for liquids, cough, rash other than facial rash, and temperature greater than 102°F.”
Treatment of symptoms of teething is not automatically necessary, as symptoms are self-limited, and resolve with emergence of the tooth. When help is needed, however, focus on comfort by cooling your finger with an ice cube and then running your finger gently over the gums. Topical analgesics such as Oragel (I have no commercial interest, and this is not a sponsored endorsement!) may be helpful – apply a small amount to your finger and hold it directly on the area of the gum that seems most painful, for 10 seconds or so. And oral anti-inflammatories, such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen, may be helpful as well. Always refer to the bottle for the right dose for your loved one.
And, as always, if your parental radar tells you something just isn’t right, don’t hesitate to talk to your doctor.
What a snow day means at Quinte Pediatrics
Snow days, freezing rain and school bus cancellations are tricky days at a pediatric clinic.
On the one hand, illness waits for no one, and when you’re sick, prompt care is definitely the gold standard.
However, when driving is icy or snowy, packing the kids or teen into the car and venturing out on the roads is not always a wise choice, particularly when the roads are too treacherous for the school buses. Watching, waiting, and keeping your child comfortable at home until the roads clear is often more sensible when your child awakens with new symptoms of an illness. And we’ve found over the years that many parents call to reschedule, or don’t show up for, pre-booked consultation appointments on these days.
At Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, our policy in general is to close the clinic on mornings when the school buses are cancelled. We look at each snow day carefully. For example, if buses are cancelled only in one region, but running elsewhere, we’ll be open for business as usual. On a morning like today, however, when buses across our entire region are shut down, we close our doors as well.
If ever in doubt, check our website, our Facebook page, our Twitter feed, or the voicemail at the office, 613-966-1999. We update these first thing in the morning, usually by 7 am, on bad weather days.
Until today’s freezing rain stops and the crews clear our roads and sidewalks, take extra care and stay safe.
Progress in Medicine: Quinte Pediatrics in 2012 and Beyond
Medicine, at its core, is a profession intended to prevent, diagnose, treat and rehabilitate illness. The knowledge, aptitude, expertise, and technology to achieve these goals are relatively concrete and simply defined. Shouldn’t health care be fairly straightforward then? When you or your child get sick, a visit to the doctor should get you fixed up and back on track.
But so often, things are much more complicated. Wheeziness may be a virus, bacteria, smoke or pets, asthma, a foreign body in the airway. Your visit may be to your doctor, someone on-call for his or her practice, another doctor, a nurse practitioner, a clinic, an emergency room, a telemedicine operator. Your treatment may be an antibiotic, a puffer, over-the-counter, watch-and-wait. Your pharmacy may or may not have the needed medication available. You may receive detailed information about your diagnosis and treatment, or nothing at all. The need and plan for follow-up may be well defined or open-ended.
Well, I’d say there’s good news and bad news when it comes to health care. The bad news is that there has always been a component of messiness involved in the delivery of health care. For example, 90 years ago, on January 11, 1922, life-saving insulin was first administered to a child with diabetes. Yet it took several more years for it to become widely available, and during that wait, available supplies of insulin were prescribed to patients of privilege and connection in a way that most of us would find unacceptable in 2012.
The good news is we really do enjoy a quality of life and health that continues to improve. Science and technology advance our knowledge, and tools of science and investigation become more commonly available to all of us rather than a privileged few. Further, lessons learned in systems, staffing and service delivery which are successful in industry are increasingly being studied and adapted to health care. Without fanfare, health care innovations are rolled out almost as often as Toyota rolls out a new model, or Apple wows us with a new product or upgrade.
Here’s what we need: a system that is understandable. One that provides precisely what’s needed, when it’s needed, without leaving you with the feeling that there might be more if only you knew someone in the system, or lived in a bigger city, or found the right web site, or had a relative that could pay for the tests you need. One that gives you confidence that everyone’s after the same goal, and not overwhelmed by inefficiency, or distracted by profit, influence, politics or the multiple other things that seem to pop up in the media on a too-often basis.
So where does this leave us at Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine? Our vision is to be the go-to place for the best in children’s health; continuously looking at services that will change the way we care for kids and working to bring those big ideas to life right here in Quinte. We believe that awesome kids and maturing teens deserve an awesome response to their medical needs – That’s what we’re here for!
In January, our Obesity and Fitness Clinics open for children and teens. Our goal is to see life-enhancing improvements in obesity and fitness in our community. We will be providing medical screening, assessment, education and treatment using material developed by the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions, the American College of Sports Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control.
Our staff model will be changing. We will be adding a dietitian and a kinesiologist to the team over the next six months, as well as welcoming back Patty to our front office.
We have adjusted the format we use to provide our core services, and will be piloting a new system of follow-up to improve our communication and your understanding of the issues that arise during your visit to Quinte Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Finally, many of you are aware that the service plans we have been developing over the past year or so will provide additional care to patients of all ages. January promises to be the month in which our financing is, hopefully, finalized, and we can move ahead, including the addition of new partners and affiliations designed to bring you the best of care under one roof here in Quinte.
New clinic format for 2012
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 2012.
With the new year and our fresh outlook come some exciting changes here at QP, the first of which is a completely revamped services format and schedule.
Starting in January our Acute Care Clinic will be moving to two days a week – Mondays and Fridays. There are a couple of reasons for this, including the fact that these have consistently been our busiest days, with significant drops in traffic on the Tuesdays and Thursday. The first ACC day of the new year will be January 9th.
So what are going to be doing with the rest of the week? We’ve decided to dedicate specific days to our Medical Consultation and Shared Care/Special Needs services. You’ll still require a referral from your family doctor for these services but rather than scheduling those appointments in between and around the ACC, we’re giving them their own days to allow for a more focused approach.
Furthermore, we’re making one day each month into a dedicated Consultation Follow Up day for that month’s Medical Consultation patients. These clinics will run from 9:00am to 1:00pm, using an open schedule. At your appointment, Dr. Dempsey will discuss his findings with you and provide proper course of action. Once he has seen your child, you will either be returned to your family doctor for ongoing care or will be seen again based on Dr. Dempsey’s recommendations.
Finally, along with all of these changes, we’ll also be adding a new service to our repertoire: a by-referral Obesity and Nutrition Clinic. Held once a month, clinic patients will learn about obesity, the associated risk factors and being working with Dr. Dempsey and a registered dietician to begin making positive and healthy lifestyle changes. Expect a lot more info on this service in January!
While there may be a lot of big changes on the way, what won’t change is the level of dedication and caring you’ve come to expect from us! From everyone here at QP, we hope you have a happy and healthy holiday season with your families.
