Registered nurse Manjot Kaur Munday prepares with PPE before visiting a patient with COVID-19 on June 4, 2021. A family doctor working in British Columbia and Alberta says patients who don’t get the care they need before ending up in overcrowded emergency rooms should be the focus of swift action by the country’s health ministers as they meet in Vancouver. Dr. Carllin Man said patients without a family doctor tend to return to ERs where tired doctors and nurses are working longer hours as colleagues leave the profession. “For too long, our health systems have relied on our goodwill as health professionals,” Man said. “We’re doing more and more when we should have stopped a long time ago, but there’s no one else. What are you going to do, just let these patients suffer? Of course not.” The man, who works part-time at a clinic in Burnaby, B.C., as well as emergency rooms in central Alberta, said he will need to refill some patients’ prescriptions during the upcoming 10-day vacation because he won’t there is someone to cover for him. “So every day I have to log on to my computer and try to manage as much as I can while I’m gone,” he said of his chronically ill patients who aren’t the best fit for care by other doctors without full knowledge of their medical history. Man said it’s time governments across Canada listened to the concerns of patients and their caregivers. The health ministers of all 13 provinces and territories, along with their federal counterpart, Jean-Yves Duclos, are set to meet in Vancouver on Monday and Tuesday. The meetings come four months after premiers from across Canada convened in Victoria to discuss the woes plaguing the health care system. The premiers asked the federal government to increase the Canada Health Transfer, the money each jurisdiction gets for health care, to 35 per cent, from 22 per cent. BC Health Minister Adrian Dix said the extra money is needed as the province tackles shortages of nurses and doctors, improved access to digital health care, and mental health and substance use services related to the toxic drug crisis. “We need the federal government to be our partner in this approach,” he said in a statement. “This means having a serious conversation about Health Care Transfer in Canada.” The Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association and HealthCareCAN, which represents various organizations and hospitals, joined forces to push health ministers to retain workers through incentives such as mental health support. They are also calling for a Canada-wide strategy to collect workforce data, to allow doctors to be more easily licensed wherever in the country they are needed most, and to improve access to primary care and virtual visits. The man completed his training in Alberta seven years ago, but said getting a license to practice in British Columbia was a months-long, arduous process. “I had to jump through all these hoops. I had to physically travel to Vancouver, to the (College of Physicians and Surgeons practice), to show my face and my degrees. I mean, they didn’t do that in Alberta. They trusted the fact that I was licensed by the National Medical Board of Canada and all these other national organizations that verify our degrees and training.” Dr. Alika Lafontaine, president of the Canadian Medical Association, said the collapse in primary care is spilling over into other parts of hospitals beyond ERs, as well as into long-term care, because of cost-cutting. “There is a recognition that we have fallen far behind the demand for health services in every part of the country. In Ontario, there are tens of millions of health services and thousands of surgeries that are backlogged,” said Lafontaine, who is an anesthesiologist in Grande Prairie. Alta. “The biggest fear I have for the health care system going forward is that those of us who think we’re going to be there tomorrow, may not actually be there in the same form. And you really won’t know until you need it.” care.” Lafontaine said he hopes the meeting of health ministers will result in collaboration across Canada “because the crises are too big for any one jurisdiction. If we don’t act, all of our systems will continue to deteriorate. And I think the push for action now it depends on how badly the patients are suffering.” Sylvain Brousseau, president of the Canadian Nurses Association, said underpaid nurses are leaving their jobs because their mental health is suffering due to poor working conditions. He said they are often tasked with tasks that have nothing to do with their training due to a lack of office and cleaning staff. “Nurses perform 48 percent of non-nursing duties,” she said. “When you ask a nurse to clean the floor because someone was sick, it’s not the role of nurses to do that.” Brousseau said the time for constant debate by federal, provincial and territorial politicians regarding health care resourcing is over. “We’ve talked a lot. Now, it’s time for action,” he said. “No nurses, no health care system.”
