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Cheers to All the Family Doctors
I nominated our family physician for an award last year. Sadly, she didn’t win this well-deserved recognition, but I made sure to send...

Sue Robins
Feb 21, 20243 min read


Caregiving for Love
Taking care of another human being is the most honourable job on Earth. Caregiving is also devalued, unrecognized and unsupported. There...

Sue Robins
Feb 21, 20243 min read


A Series on Patient Advocacy
This series of 4 essays was originally posted on LinkedIn, based on my Levels of Advocacy diagram for patient and family advocates. A....

Sue Robins
Feb 15, 202411 min read


If You Build It and They Don’t Come: The Story of Give a Duck
Naively, when I began advocacy twenty years ago, I envisioned a cycle of quality improvement where things only got better. I never...

Sue Robins
Dec 28, 20235 min read


Who Cares for the Patient Advocates?
I've been thinking about a recent article written by Lisa Machado called Canada’s Advocates are Burning Out. I'm grateful to Lisa for...

Sue Robins
Nov 21, 20232 min read


Way Beyond Textbook Learning
I recently had the opportunity to review case studies about Down syndrome that are used to teach medical students. My main response was:...

Sue Robins
Oct 4, 20233 min read


Beauty as a Social Determinant of Health
Years ago at a health conference I heard a nun who worked in Winnipeg’s North End say, “Beauty should be a social determinant of health.”...

Sue Robins
Sep 28, 20232 min read


Against Sickness Shaming
There are many euphemisms for being sick: under the weather, unwell, out of sorts. When I had cancer, many people whispered the word...

Sue Robins
Aug 15, 20233 min read


Hope for the Best, Plan for the Rest: A commentary
I was immediately drawn to the cover of Dr. Sammy Winemaker and Dr. Hsien Seow’s new book Hope for the Best, Plan for the Rest: 7 key to...

Sue Robins
Aug 3, 20233 min read


The Making of Big Love
This is a story about making a story. Telling the story behind the story might be meta, but art, like the video I created, does not just...

Sue Robins
Jul 25, 20236 min read


People With Disabilities Can Act
On Sunday July 9, 2023, I was sitting at a table in a ballroom with my youngest son Aaron and my husband Mike. We all had our Sunday best...

Sue Robins
Jul 12, 20234 min read


The Man With the Wall Around His Heart
I presented as a patient with sudden onset of abdominal issues who was terrified that her breast cancer had returned. My family physician...

Sue Robins
Jun 20, 20232 min read


Give a Duck: A good convo over a cup of tea
This is the last in the series about my new Give a Duck Community. I see online spaces as a puzzle. No one site can give me everything I...

Sue Robins
Nov 20, 20223 min read


The Proximity of Mortality - A Visual Artist’s Journey Through Cancer
…sometimes simplicity is the most powerful spiritual stimulation. - Nicholas J Petrelli, M.D. On the surface, The Proximity of Mortality,...

Sue Robins
Nov 9, 20222 min read


My Better Way: Give a Duck Community
The second in a series Last month I wrote about my growing discomfort with Twitter that ended with the assertion: There’s got to be a...

Sue Robins
Oct 30, 20224 min read


A Health Care Rant: We are Heading Entirely in the Wrong Direction
Health care's raison d'être is to care for patients. If patients and caregivers aren't an organization's #1 stakeholder - the first...

Sue Robins
Oct 19, 20224 min read


Safe Spaces for Health Care Advocates
This essay is the first of a series The other day I posted this picture of me wearing an N95 mask on Twitter. I have a big-ish following...

Sue Robins
Sep 30, 20223 min read


A Remarkable Life
(Lorraine) helped her staff address their challenges, and recognize their joys, in taking care of patients and their families...and the...

Sue Robins
Aug 29, 20222 min read


There’s Got to Be a Better Way: Punking Health Care
There is a genre called solarpunk that is a creative way of describing a future state of the world where humanity has succeeded in...

Sue Robins
Aug 7, 20224 min read


The Stories We Tell Ourselves
How can we relate to stories that threaten our own? Some of us go towards the threat. We search and question and dig. Some of us...

Sue Robins
Jul 24, 20223 min read
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