Northwood diabetes care article misleading

Normally, The Chronicle Herald seems to print fairly balanced stories, but on June 27, it displayed irresponsible, one-sided journalism in its lead article, “Diabetic testing falls short, man says.”

The reporter, John Mcphee, allowed a husband to say many misleading and hurtful things about the care that was delivered to his wife by the staff at the Halifax Campus nursing home. Many of these accusations are inaccurate, speculative and without any basis in reality.

I know what I am talking about, as I was the medical director of Northwood for almost 40 years until I retired from that position.

Many of the complaints were centred around what the relative felt was inadequate diabetic care the resident was receiving. He claims this led to repeated falls and possible injuries. He went on to say there were “criminal” shortfalls in glucose testing and “diabetic falls are widespread at Northwood,” without providing any evidence.

Mcphee says he tried for two days to contact Northwood’s communication department and the Nova Scotia Health Authority, without success. I feel he had an obligation to try harder to contact other health-care resources before allowing misleading accusations to be published.

I know for a fact that Northwood practises evidence-based care of diabetes in frail, elderly nursing home residents. This does not require glucose testing before every meal to determine insulin dosages, as it might be for Type 1 younger diabetic patients. Overly tight control of blood-sugar levels has been shown to increase hypoglycemia, resulting in increased strokes and brain damage. As well, falls in the elderly are a very complex subject and only rarely does it come from lowblood-sugar reactions.

Northwood’s philosophy is to provide appropriate, compassionate and quality care for all residents’ remaining quality of life in the home. This includes working with dieticians to liberalize the resident’s diet to provide variety and joy in eating — often the only joy for a person at the end of their life. Repeated finger-stick blood-glucose testing for “protocols” does not offer much comfort or better care for the elderly resident.

Mcphee could have done better fact-checking for his article, had he talked with any of the excellent geriatricians in our area, contacted knowledgeable evidence-based dietitians or even talked with my very capable successor as medical director of Northwood, Dr. Barry Clarke — all of whom could have provided a more balanced presentation for the article.

As everyone knows, Northwood has gone through an extremely rough period due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, over my long tenure as medical director, I found all Northwood staff — especially the nursing staff — to be the most giving, caring and compassionate people one could entrust to care for anyone’s elderly loved one.

Northwood has been very extensively evaluated by Accreditations Canada and it has consistently been given the full five-year accreditation, with the highest commendations this organization can award.

The Herald editorial staff should stop practising lazy, irresponsible journalism in what seems to be an attempt to find some scandal or “dirt” against an organization that has been repeatedly and unfairly wounded and maligned.

I find it even more ironic that on the same day this article ran, Saltwire published a full-page ad for the Northwood Foundation that listed almost 500 persons or businesses that helped Northwood during the COVID-19 crisis. That is a double standard and hypocritical on the newspaper’s part.

Dr. Jack Sommers is the former medical director for Northwoodcare Inc.