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Fed up with rolling emergency room closures, some rural B.C. mayors are calling on the province to finish the vaccine mandate for well being employees as a approach to get sidelined nurses again on the job.

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Health Minister Adrian Dix mentioned that choice shouldn’t be on the desk, however the province has a spread of different instruments to spice up the health-care workforce in rural elements of B.C.

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Merritt Mayor Michael Goetz mentioned the Nicola Valley Hospital has been quickly closed 4 instances since Christmas.

He mentioned with 80,000 autos a day passing by Merritt on the Coquihalla Highway, “there’s always going to be an incident somewhere along the way where somebody may have to go to the hospital. And if the ER is closed, they have to go to Kamloops or Kelowna.”

Goetz is considered one of 37 mayors within the B.C. Rural Health Care Alliance, a bunch that goals to current a collective voice in pushing the Health Ministry for options to the well being care scarcity.

During a convention name between rural mayors and Interior Health Authority officers on Monday, Goetz mentioned one of many first questions requested was: “Can we look lifting the vaccine (mandate) for nurses?”

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B.C. is likely one of the few provinces to keep up vaccine mandates for well being employees.

A provincial public well being order requires the roughly 190,000 well being care employees in hospitals, long-term care houses and group well being centres in B.C. to be vaccinated for COVID-19. The B.C. Public Service Agency additionally requires its 30,000 staff to be totally vaccinated.

Nearly 2,500 health-care employees in hospitals have been fired for not being immunized in opposition to COVID-19, in response to the Ministry of Health. Almost half of them labored within the Interior and Northern well being authorities, which is the place staffing shortages have pressured the persistent closures of emergency rooms.

But Dix informed Postmedia News on Tuesday that he was agency that the province has no plans to carry the vaccine mandate.

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“The issue on health-care staffing challenges is COVID-19, it’s not the mandate,” he mentioned, explaining that staffing shortages are primarily as a consequence of individuals not coming into work once they’re sick. Dix mentioned that 99 per cent of full-time well being care employees have been vaccinated for COVID-19, so the quantity unable to work as a result of they’re unvaccinated is comparatively small.

B.C. Nurses’ Union mentioned in a press release the union encourages nurses to be “vaccinated against communicable diseases as a preventive measure and in accordance with the most recent scientific evidence.” The union mentioned the choice to revise any public well being order “rests entirely with our elected officials.”

B.C. Liberal well being care critic Shirley Bond mentioned it’s time for the province to carry the vaccine mandates for well being employees.

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“We’ve looked across the country, British Columbia is certainly standing on its own,” she mentioned. “There should be a very significant conversation about what a pathway back to employment looks like in British Columbia,” for unvaccinated well being employees.

Goetz mentioned rural mayors would additionally like B.C. to licence doctor assistants, which may assist fill vacant positions in small communities. Physicians assistants are permitted in 4 provinces and one other two, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, are working pilot tasks. The assistants work beneath a health care provider and help with duties resembling inspecting sufferers, writing prescriptions and aiding throughout surgical procedures. Physicians assistants additionally work within the Canadian navy.

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A Port Hardy physician, Dr. Alex Nataros, has mentioned he’s ready to pay out of his personal pocket for a doctor assistant as a result of he’s months away from being the one emergency division doctor in Northern Vancouver Island city of 4,000 individuals, as his three colleagues have introduced their departure.

Dix mentioned B.C. doesn’t have a physicians assistant coaching program and, in consequence, the province has put its deal with serving to internationally-trained medical graduates develop into licensed as “associate physicians.” Associate physicians usually are not licensed for impartial observe however can work beneath doctor supervision.

The province can be tripling the number of seats within the Practice Ready Assessment Program, a licensing requirement for internationally-trained medical doctors which Dix mentioned has been a profitable instrument in offering medical doctors in rural communities.

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However, Elkford Mayor Steve Fairbairn mentioned it’s “immoral” to be poaching well being care employees from different nations to shore up this nation’s well being system. Instead, the province ought to deal with eradicating the boundaries for Canadians to coach as health-care employees, he mentioned.

Fairbairn is pissed off that the group’s emergency room has been closed since Sept. 29, 2021, a measure that was presupposed to be short-term. A medical clinic stays open locally of about 3,000 individuals which is 161 kilometres northeast of Cranbrook.

Fairbairn mentioned he’s been dwelling locally for 33 years and “we’ve never before not had family doctors and I’ve never in this town seen as little health care as we have in 2023.”

Jude Kornelsen, co-director of the centre for rural well being analysis at UBC, mentioned whereas it’s at all times been troublesome to maintain rural well being staffing ranges, the problem grew to become extra acute throughout the pandemic as extra individuals referred to as in sick and a few left the career completely due to burnout.

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This has created “a lack of redundancy” that has hit rural communities tougher than city areas as a result of “when one person leaves a community … for personal or professional reasons it destabilizes the whole community,” she mentioned.

Kornelsen, who has studied the inequities in entry to well being care between rural and concrete residents, performed a survey of 381 rural residents and located they spent on common $856 for transport and $674 for lodging  for a medical want, resembling a surgical procedure, as soon as pre-surgery consultations, post-surgery care and different steps are included. This elevated stress on sufferers and diminished the chance of looking for medical look after critical well being points.

For instance, Kornelsen spoke to a girl who opted to not get most cancers remedy as a result of it might imply travelling far outdoors her group as soon as per week for six weeks.

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Kornelsen mentioned she was pleased to see Jennifer Rice, the B.C. NDP MLA for the North Coast, named the parliamentary secretary for rural well being.

She would love an enlargement of publicly funded digital well being care so that individuals in distant communities can do a telehealth go to, for instance, for a session prematurely of a surgical appointment.

When individuals do should journey lengthy distances for well being care, Kornelsen mentioned, the province ought to totally cowl their journey and lodging bills up entrance to make sure individuals dwelling in rural and distant communities don’t face a monetary burden for looking for well being care.

“When we start seeing the dissolution of primary care, like in Port Hardy, we start actually seeing situations where community members have to leave just to access basic services,” Kornelsen mentioned.

However, journey needs to be a final resort, she mentioned. “We need to be strengthening and supporting primary care in rural communities because we know that strong primary care leads to better health outcomes.”

with recordsdata from the Victoria Times Colonist 

kderosa@postmedia.com

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