The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) called for a ban on sales of energy drinks to underage Canadians at its annual general assembly, which wrapped up Wednesday in Calgary.

Dr. Rao Tadepalli, the president of the Yukon Medical Association (YMA), was at the conference and supported the motion.

The main issues for the doctors are the health concerns associated with energy drinks, including heart palpitations, anxiety and sleep disorders, Tadepalli told the Star.

Last November, Darius Elias, then independent and now the Yukon Party MLA for Vuntut Gwitchin, brought forward a motion to ban energy drinks in territorial schools and to develop legislation prohibiting the sale of the drinks to youth under 18.

Elias said he'll have to start from square one and discuss the issue with his new caucus colleagues.

Speaking to the Star today, he seemed confident they would be open to considering the need for action on youth energy drink consumption.

"I consider these drinks a chemical cocktail that doesn't belong in the hands of our children,” Elias said, calling the CMA motion a "breath of fresh air.”

Other issues of public concern discussed at the CMA assembly were access to palliative care and gaps in staffing.

While there was some discussion of the issue of physician-assisted death, Tadepalli said he doesn't expect that conversation to heat up in the Yukon in the foreseeable future.

Palliative care, however, is pertinent in the territory, he said.

"Death is a shunned subject, and everybody is going to die, and to place a level of comfort in dying is important. That topic is kind of put off,” he said.

Doctors at the conference were asked to fill out advanced care directives. They're encouraged to have these conversations with their patients, elderly and terminal specifically, but there's nothing stopping healthy people from filling them out.

An advanced care directive asks you to consider what measures you want your doctor to take if you experience, say, a cardiac arrest and stop breathing.

Do you want to be put on a respirator or a feeding tube? These are questions the directive asks you to consider.

Tadepalli said doctors may be hesitant to have these conversations with patients, but they are important.

In the Yukon, there is access to advanced care directives, but only the minimum number of patients are filling them out, he said.

The YMA will have its own general assembly in November, and Tadepalli said the issue will be raised there as well.

However, he's expecting doctors will also be asked to fill out the forms themselves as they did at the CMA meeting.

The third significant issues discussed at the meeting regarded the disconnect between residency training programs and actual gaps in health care service.

For instance, there are numerous residencies available in orthopedic surgery but the shortages are in family medicine, as we're seeing in the territory.

"The Canadian Association of Interns and Residents said they are greatly worried about lack of employment at the end of hard training, and that there is a disconnect,” said Tadepalli.

They say the students and residents need to be educated about the choices they are making and the likelihood of securing employment at the end of their training.

"It is a matter of great concern to us that there is this mismatch,” he said.

"We know that we have an obvious deficiency of family doctors and psychiatrists. The politics even within educational institutes are causing this problem and lack of leadership and irresponsibility of these institutes is resulting in a lot of health care dollars being wasted,” he said.

These are issues a new YMA president will have to manage, though.

Tadepalli told the Star he will step down from his role as president in time for the November meeting.

He would not at this point discuss his reasons for stepping down from the post he has held for several years.