File Photo (Image Credit: CFJC News)

By Sydney Chisholm

EMERGENCY ROOM

With no walk-in clinics and few family doctors, RIH emergency room the centre of primary care in Kamloops

Mar 10, 2023 | 4:21 PM

KAMLOOPS – Walk-in clinics are a thing of the past for Kamloops, but with so many living without a general practitioner, many residents don’t know what to do when they need more minor medical attention.

For the 40,000 people without a family doctor in Kamloops, accessing primary care is a nightmare.

There are few options for same-day doctor appointments, and that is pushing people to sit in the emergency room at the Royal Inland Hospital as if it was a walk-in clinic.

Doctor Eric Haywood-Farmer, an ER physician at RIH says there is a steady stream of patients who could be better treated by a primary care doctor.

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“Or, we have people whose condition has worsened because they were unable to see any primary care so just delayed care,” Haywood-Farmer told CFJC Today.

The increase in patients along with staff shortages means you could be waiting for hours before seeing a doctor.

That waiting is done in a more limited space due to the current renovations in the ER that are expected to last for the next five years.

“It feels bad, as a provider, to be providing bad care to your patients and have them be really uncomfortable, but we really don’t have any choice in terms of the physical space,” the ER physician said.

Hospital administrators say they are looking at bringing in more mid-level healthcare providers to ease some pressures being seen.

“We are looking at a different transitional care model,” Joshua Sharp, RIH director of operations said. “We do have licensed practical nurses and healthcare aides who have joined our emergency department team, whereas in the past, they weren’t (there).”

According to Haywood-Farmer, the ER usually sees between 200-to-230 patients a day. Many don’t have a family doctor – meaning they can’t simply go home once the urgent care is done.

“It makes it much more complicated to discharge people from the hospital when there’s no one to follow up with them and take care of them,” Haywood-Farmer said. “We’re sort of confronted with problems on every end of the patient care.”

In spite of this, staffing at the Kamloops ER is slowly improving.

“We are noticing that RIH vacancy rates are improving, so that definitely is a benefit,” Sharp said. “Our main priority right now is to support our staff on our retention, as well as making workplace improvements throughout our site.”