The residents of the Vernon Lumby electoral district, as are many districts in this province, are faced with critical doctor and nursing shortages.
There have always been shortages in this regard however the NDP, foolishly, laid off doctors and nurses during the COVID crisis.
As would be expected, many of the dismissed professionals were recruited and have left the province.
Rehiring is almost impossible.
Hence, we are left with a major on-going shortage of health care professionals attributed to the faulty decisions, by the NDP and supported by our nurse/MLA Harwinder Sandhu.
On July 30, 2024, the NDP proudly announced: B.C. is the first and only province to mandate nurse-patient ratios!
Actually, we have had nurse-patient ratios for many years.
Certainly I am familiar with those at Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and I am very familiar with the downsides.
The NDP announcement on July 30 was really justifying an increase of nurse positions.
Exciting for the RNABC, but questionable for residents of our community!
The increase of staff should ensure better patient care but only if you have the staff to fill the newly created positions.
Failing to recognize the inherent downside Sandhu proudly supported this NDP knee jerk effort to fix the broken system.
More nursing vacancies and no nurses to fill them!
A new disaster is pending when the new nurse-patient ratios kick in!
The hospital will need additional nurses, but from where?
Does our MLA have a plan?
Primary coverage has always been and will continue to be for the critical care units such as emergency and ICU.
When the new nurse - patient ratio cannot be achieved in these areas, because of a nursing shortage; the only option is to move nursing staff from non-emergency areas (operating rooms, and outpatient services).
One solution could be to cancel elective surgical procedures, so that the nurses may be reassigned to shore up the nursing ratio in emergency. Thus creating a domino effect, and subsequent closure of operating rooms and medical unit beds.
The waiting lists for elective procedures will become longer! Closure of emergency units is a real possibility!
It is important to look at mechanisms to improve patient care and the concept of reassessing nurse-patient ratios to improve patient care may achieve that goal.
However supporting the increase of the nurse-patient ratios before dealing with the staffing shortage is a disaster in the making!
It is called “putting the cart before the horse!”
The first priority, for a health care initiative should be to encourage training and recruit health care professionals, in order to meet the needs of this community.
Then we can talk about increasing nurse-patient ratios to improve the service to our patients.
Janet Green