Gladstone worried about health care future
- Details
- Published on Thursday, March 30, 2017
By Eoin Devereux
Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press
Gladstone residents are concerned about the state of healthcare in their community and recently voiced those concerns to representatives of Southern Health-Santé Sud. Over 100 people packed the Senior’s Drop-In Centre on Monday, Mar. 27 to hear a presentation from Regional Health Authority CEO Kathy McPhail regarding the future of services in Gladstone. Other RHA reps in attendance included vice president of Medical Denis Fortier, executive director Marian Woods and the director of Health Services for Gladstone and MacGregor, Shirley Guenther.
The evening’s discussions were primarily focused on the staffing situation for doctors and nurse practitioners (NPs). The community is currently alloted two physicians and two NPs, who are registered nurses with advanced training in diagnosing and treating illness. One of the doctors is retiring at the end of March, while both NP positions will soon be vacant (one is already open, while the other will be vacated in mid-April). Questions from the crowd focused on what the Regional Health Authority is doing to entice practitioners to work in Gladstone and more importantly, keep them within the community. McPhail informed the group that job notifications have been published to fill the NPs vacancies, while an international physician is being prepped to take over the unfilled doctor’s position before the fall.
“The plan is for an international medical graduate to be in place for August, with a supervising doctor from Portage la Prairie to oversee the transition. That is a requirement for this program. We have those doctors training right now and will allocate to the communities of the greatest need. As for nurse practitioners, we have released the job listing and are hopeful that the position will be filled soon,” noted McPhail.
She added that the concerns that were voiced are similar to those of several other communities across the region and are something the RHA is trying to address.
Another issue discussed was a program in which nurse practitioners did on-call work, which means if patients needed to speak with a medical professional after hours, they could phone them. While this model was well received within the region, the RHA found the model too be unsustainable in the long term. The reasoning was the amount of time off that would be accumulated by the NPs in lieu. The situation ended up impacting the number of hours they could work at the Health Centre clinic.
Because of that, the RHA decided it would no longer get the nurse practitioners to do the on-call and it would go straight through the doctors, either locally or through Portage la Prairie. According to some residents at the meeting, that change was a part of reason why the nurse practitioners decided to work somewhere else. The RHA is not permitted to discuss employee files to that degree and couldn’t confirm any of those details.
The topic of aging equipment at the Gladstone Health Centre was brought up, with the x-ray machine being the focus point of concerns.
Municipality of Westlake-Gladstone Mayor David Single has attended several RHA meetings as a stakeholder. Single said that while he understands the feeling of frustration around the situation, he knows the RHA is working to ensure Gladstone is once again fully staffed as quickly as possible.
“What I’m hearing [from the RHA] is that Gladstone is part of their future and that the hospital is going to be here for a long time. They’re continuing to work hard on recruitment. All these stakeholders meetings I’ve been to make me understand how hard it is to recruit and maintain doctors for rural Manitoba. [The doctors] have all kinds of reasons for not wanting to stay in rural areas. One of the most prevalent appears to be a lack of case diversity. Over time, they lose some of their skills simply due to lack of use,” noted Single. “I know people are frustrated with losing doctors and NPs. You can’t blame them because they thought we had a good thing going here and all of a sudden they’re gone. I have faith that the RHA is continuing to do what it can for Gladstone, and when I say Gladstone, I don’t just mean the town. I mean the whole municipality.”
Single added that the strong attendance at the meeting is a good thing because it shows the RHA that the future of local medicine is a big issue for the public.
