“I’m more done than ever,” he said.
CBC News analysis shows why this can happen.
So far this year, Alberta Health Services has published at least 52 news bulletins alerting the public that Alberta emergency rooms and emergency care centers were closed or relied solely on nursing staff because no doctor was available.
It is just a continuous drainage. There is always more work to be done. We always seem to lose extra resources.- Dr. Parker Vandermeer
CBC News could only find for 50 similar announcements posted on the AHS website for the previous year. AHS spokesman James Wood said that in smaller communities, the sudden absence of a single doctor due to illness or other causes could lead to an “inevitable” closure of the ER.
Some of this year’s closures lasted days at a time and are all for communities outside of Calgary and Edmonton.
Dr. Parker Vandermeer is a physician working in emergency departments across the county. (Submitted by Parker Vandermeer)
While rural communities have struggled with staff in the past, resorting to these types of closures has been rare, said Vandermeer, who works shifts across the county, including Lethbridge and Spirit River.
“I always feel like I’ve reached the bottom, until next month. And I look back and say, ‘Dude, life was good then.’ It ‘s just a constant drain. resources. ”
Over the past six months, Vandermeer says he has noticed that the requests he receives have changed – from requests at work one or two days to more than 20 days.
And when communities do not find someone to fill these gaps, sometimes they have to go to the emergency room without a doctor.
“I think for a lot of people – especially those who are a little older or have more medical conditions, who are probably more likely to need hospitalization – it’s very stressful,” Vandermeer said.
“In many of these communities, this may be the only hospital for 100, 150 kilometers. Therefore, not being able to get to it could potentially mean that a 30 minute drive to a hospital turns into two hours, which in an emergency it can be life or death “.
“Our health care is not so important”
Consort, Alta., Is a community that closed multiple emergency rooms throughout 2022.
Sandra Kelts, managing director of the Acadia Foundation, which runs nursing homes in Consort, Hanna and Oyen, said she felt “abandoned” by the closures, which take people to emergency departments in nearby communities, some of which are half an hour away.
“If people lived in the city and had to drive half an hour to get to a hospital, they would be outraged. But it’s okay for us or we feel like second-class citizens. Taking care of our health is not so important,” he said. he said.
And he says some seniors who have lived in a community all their lives had to leave because they could not get the care they needed.
“We travel at least 30 minutes down the highway overnight, in the middle of winter, to go to an emergency. And then when they get there, if they go by ambulance, how do they get home?”
They are forced to change where they live
People – especially the elderly – are leaving their communities because medical care is not easily accessible to them, said Dr. Vesta Michelle Warren, president of the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) and a doctor in Sundre, Alta.
“They may have to change their place of residence to have the health care they need to stay healthy. So it has a big impact on the community. It has a big impact on patients and their families,” he said. he said.
Dr. Vesta Michelle Warren is president of the Alberta Medical Association and a physician at Sundre, Alta. (Submitted by the Alberta Medical Association)
The reason these positions are difficult to fill is because there are fewer doctors in the province in general, Warren said.
Doctors move to other provinces, retire or change the way they practice. Many are exhausted after working in healthcare for two years after the pandemic and can not keep up with the increased workload that came with it.
Losses in smaller communities
Wood, from AHS, said that during the closure of an emergency department, plans are put in place to support the community in an emergency and that there have never been more than a handful of emergency closures at the same time, usually one or two of the 103 hospitals. “We will continue to work with the provincial government and local partners to recruit doctors and staff in rural communities, and we hope to continue to reduce the impact on hospitals as we go through the most embarrassing phase of the pandemic.” Alberta Health spokesman Steve Buick said the pandemic has affected health care across Canada, including community medical practices, especially in smaller communities where hiring and retaining health professionals is a long-term challenge. He said the province is working to increase its supply of doctors, especially in rural areas, spending $ 90 million a year on conservation and recruitment in the countryside and working with the AMA to address the pressure on doctors’ practices.
