James P. Waddell, M.D., FRCSC
Coordinator, Canadian National Action Network
For the Bone and Joint Decade

The first meeting of regional representatives to discuss access to bone and joint surgery under the auspices of the National Action Network for the Bone and Joint Decade was held in conjunction with the Canadian Orthopaedic Association Annual Meeting in Toronto this past June. I am delighted to say that we had excellent participation and representation from virtually every province and several regions within the larger provinces at the meeting.

Our discussion focussed largely on current strategies in place across Canada to meet the increasing demand for lower limb joint replacement surgery and, equally important, how can we accomplish this without compromising other important aspects of musculoskeletal care.

Strategies that have been evolved in different provinces range from enlisting private hospital resources through to inviting orthopaedic surgeons to work weekends to address waiting lists. Some of these strategies are obviously more attractive than others; for example, the concept of having a national strategy to address wait lists by having orthopaedic surgeons do elective surgery seven days a week is a non-starter in my opinion and in the opinion of most of the attendees at the meeting.

Following this meeting, the Executive of the National Action Network has met on several occasions. We have put together a preliminary document which lists strategies that were discussed at the meeting in June; we have divided this into the pre-hospital, hospital and post-hospital phase of orthopaedic care delivery. We plan to work on this over the next two months and convene a second meeting in November of 2006. We hope at that time to finalize a document that can be used in every hospital, health region or province. We want to provide a menu of proven strategies so that individual practitioners can select a strategy which best addresses their needs and those of their patients’.

At the same time, the Bone and Joint Decade support for the comprehensive musculoskeletal curriculum remains strong. Dr. Veronica Wadey had the opportunity to present to us at the meeting and all members of the group were impressed with what this comprehensive curriculum could do for MSK education in our respective medical schools. Dr. Wadey has a number of manuscripts prepared for publication and this is going to be a very important initiative for orthopaedic surgeons encouraging more students to come into orthopaedic surgery as well as providing better education for people in family practice.

Finally, the conjoint programme between the US Bone and Joint Decade and Canadian Bone and Joint Decade to support the Young Investigators Meeting continues. The meeting will be held in Vancouver (September 29-October 1, 2006) under the chairmanship of John Esdaile. This should be an excellent meeting – every one of the Young Investigator Meetings that have been held to date have been enthusiastically received by the attendees and this one should be no exception.

This has been an excellent 12 months for the National Action Network for the Bone and Joint Decade in Canada starting with our international meeting in October of 2005 through to our national initiative regarding access to orthopaedic care and the continuous success of the Young Investigators project. We hope next year will be even better.