Rural communities throughout our province are experiencing hospital shutdowns with reduced hours and services. It is increasingly difficult for patients to receive even minimal emergency care in their small-town hospitals. Added pressures are being placed on skeleton staff to care for incoming patients from urban centres as the government transfers individuals in an attempt to reduce stress on city hospitals, as the topic throughout our province has been about Nurses burning out. Beds may be available in rural facilities, but hospital staff are at capacity. Staff shortages due to COVID-19 have managers returning to the floor to help care for patients and assist their worn out health care teams. Ambulance service providers and paramedics are struggling to keep up with the influx of calls. The pile-on of transfers puts additional stress on EMT services. The quality of care has been jeopardized through no fault of the healthcare workers. These scenarios are not sustainable, yet not proving to be short term. To health care workers the COVID-19 crisis is still very real.
At the same time the Saskatchewan Health Authority is putting people in charge of health care management who have absolutely no experience or background in health. It seems to be running itself like a business whose primary product is low cost health care to the government, not as a public service whose primary object is good health care for Saskatchewan residents.
Health care workers have given up hope that the Moe government will recognize the pressures that they are facing, let alone take steps to provide adequate staffing and facilities to meet the needs of rural communities. Who is going to fix this?
Respectfully,
Susan Jalbert,
Wood River NDP Constituency Association
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
