SOUND OFF: Healthcare crisis continues without NDP action
ONE OF THE MOST PRESSING ISSUES right now is the state of health care, especially in rural B.C. Our system is in crisis — and it’s a life and death situation. We are seeing chronic shortages of nurses, doctors, paramedics and other healthcare workers in every corner of the province, and immediate significant intervention from our NDP government is long overdue.
People should be able to have confidence that if they need urgent medical care, they will have access to it — and in a timely manner. But in far too many places around the province that is not the case. Recently in my riding of Cariboo-Chilcotin, we heard about a 14-year-old in our community who went into cardiac arrest and had to wait two hours for an ambulance to arrive. It’s an unbelievable amount of time to wait in such a serious situation, especially given the fact that there was an unstaffed ambulance just half an hour away.
We have regularly seen waits of up to 10 hours in the emergency department of Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake, and last month I heard of a day when the hospital was only 60 per cent staffed while it was at 175 per cent capacity. And just last week, 100 Mile hospital’s E.R. had to be temporarily closed. With routine closures of the E.R. in Clearwater as well, more and more rural residents are being forced to travel significant distances to get care at larger hospitals in the region. Not only is this stressful for patients and their families, but these larger facilities then face increased pressure, and they simply can’t handle the volume.
This is unacceptable. It’s not fair for our dedicated and exhausted healthcare workers who are being pushed to the point of burnout, working double shifts, and doing the jobs of multiple people, and it’s not fair for patients who deserve to know they are getting the best possible care.
