Like the classic Joni Mitchell tune intones, people often take their most precious resouces for granted, and it’s only in their absense that their value is fully realized. This lesson has hit close to home for residents of this fair region over the past few months, as . . .
staffing issues have plagued local health care facilities.
Over the weekend there was another service interruption at the Pontiac Community Hospital (PCH), as there was no surgeon on duty from Saturday morning until Monday.
This comes on the heels of a nursing shortage that threatened to close the obstetrics department at the hospital for an entire month. The crisis was narrowly averted, as a team of 10 midwives was brought in at the last minute, but they will only be staying until Aug. 25.
Representatives of the Centre intégré de santé et des services sociaux de l’Outaouais (CISSSO), as well as Pontiac MNA and Liberal health critic André Fortin, have called the addition of midwives a temporary fix, but both were mum when asked about long-term solutions to the staffing issues that have become routine in this region and many other rural regions across the province.
Staff in the area have been alerting management to the problems they’ve been facing for months, but it took until the day before a catastrophe occurred for any concrete action to be taken.
The problem is multi-faceted: there is a labour shortage across the province affecting all levels of health care employment, from doctors and surgeons to nurses, support workers and housekeeping staff. Candidates who want to work in Pontiac have to go through a selection process an hour away in Gatineau, and are required to take language tests that weed out some potential hires. In addition, many younger workers are lured by the competitive pay in Ontario or the city and don’t stick around after completing their studies.
CISSSO has lowered the requirements for some positions, and offered some meagre overtime bonuses, but they claim they can’t hire more staff if there are no applicants.
As for doctors and specialists, the current staff at the hospital have been working incredible hours to ensure that surgeries and obstetrics are still offered at the facility and for that they should be applauded. However, several doctors at PCH are approaching retirement, and have training in multiple specialties, which makes them all the more difficult to replace.
For example, the two surgeons at PCH are trained to perform c-sections, the most common emergency surgery at the hospital, but most surgeons in an urban setting don’t have this additional training.
According to Dr. Keith MacLellan, a local physician and the co-founder of the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada, in other provinces they cross-train GPs in skills like c-sections because they know rural physicians have to wear more hats than those in urban settings. A few doctors with additional training could share some of the load borne by PCH’s surgeons, but this kind of thing isn’t the norm in Quebec.
Why?
Health Minister Danielle McCann, and her opposition counterpart Fortin, have said they do, in fact, prioritize proximity health care, and they support Pontiacers delivering their babies and receiving care close to home.
Obstetrics, along with surgeons, anesthesiology and a functioning ER are the four crucial pillars for a rural hospital to function and need to be protected at all costs. If PCH were to lose these services or have them scaled back, it’s certain that more cuts would follow in quick succession.
If that’s the case, then what action has CISSSO’s current CEO, Josée Filion, taken to address the issues at PCH and what plan does she have when the mid-wife reinforcements depart at the end of the month? Filion replaced former CEO Jean Hébert in a politically motivated sacking earlier this year that led the president of CISSSO to resign in protest, and it seems unlikely that she will be drastically different from her predecessor.
As a community we need to put pressure on those with the power to take concrete action in this area, or else we risk losing one of our region’s most fundamental institutions.
The status quo is simply not acceptable and there needs to be more leadership on this issue from our public officials. Call them and ask what they’re doing to ensure Pontiac residents have health care services in their community.
Caleb Nickerson
