This story is part of Situation Critical, a CBC British Columbia series that reports on the barriers people in this province face in accessing adequate and timely health care.
The West Coast General Hospital (WCGH) emergency room in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island could be closed for much of August and September due to staff shortages, CBC has learned. News.
A WCGH employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, warns that the ER could be closed for periods of eight hours a day if no solution is found to cover hospital shifts. While the ER is currently operating, the employee said it has narrowly avoided closures in July.
The Port Alberni ER serves a population of more than 18,000 and typically receives between 60 and 80 daily visits.
The employee, a health professional, said that if the ER closes, people would have to travel an hour and 15 minutes to Nanaimo, or almost two hours to Tofino to receive emergency care, which results in a three-hour period in which an ambulance would not be available. for other community calls.
The Port Alberni Fire Department and the police detachment said they had been informed of the possible disruption.
Island Health said in a statement that there are currently no planned disruptions to the WCGH and that there would be a “closure” as a last resort. […] after exploring and exhausting all possible mitigation strategies “.
The Port Alberni emergency room serves a population of more than 18,000 and typically receives between 60 and 80 daily visits. (Google Maps)
“Island Health is actively working to ensure the availability of emergency services in the Alberni Valley region and beyond,” the statement read in part.
An ER closure in Port Alberni would be the latest in a series of temporary ER closures in small communities.
In early spring, emergency rooms in Port McNeill, in the northern part of the island, as well as the interior and northeast of the province were closed shortly before because doctors were not available for fill the shifts.
So recently Monday, the ER of Merritt’s Nicola Valley Hospital inside closed shortly after an ER doctor became ill. It reopened at 8 a.m. the next day.
Interior Health directed people in need of emergency care to access Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops or Kelowna General Hospital, between an hour and an hour and a half by car.
At an unrelated press conference on Monday, Health Minister Adrian Dix said he was aware of the closure in Merritt, but did not comment directly on possible closures in Port Alberni.
“We will continue to do what we have been doing, which is to hire and create resources in our healthcare system,” he said.
“We are asking our healthcare system to do more and the healthcare system is responding.”
Doctors “in their darkest hour”
Dr. Ramneek Dosanjh, president of Doctors of BC, said the closures are “incredibly worrying” for both health care providers and patients, and illustrate a lack of equity in the health settings of rural communities and urban.
“Emergency room setup is usually a life-saving measure, and if we say we can’t have that, we can’t offer it to a community, what kind of care are we saying we can provide? That’s devastating. in a country like ours and in a province like ours, ”he said.
“It shouldn’t matter if you’re sitting on Terrace or Dawson Creek or Port Alberni or Merritt; you should be able to access timely care and intervention.”
Dosanjh said that two years after the pandemic and six years after the toxic drug crisis, doctors across the province are facing unprecedented exhaustion and burdens for their mental health.
“This is not easy for doctors not to show up, or for nurses not to come in, these are decisions that are made in their darkest hour,” Dosanjh said.
According to the WCGH employee, keeping the Port Alberni emergency room open would require doctors to work 12- to 16-hour shifts for several weeks in a row, a workload that doctors simply cannot afford.
“We can’t get doctors out of nowhere”
Merritt Mayor Linda Brown said when a doctor calls sick, the city can’t do much to keep the ER running. The city also has a limited capacity to work on hiring and retaining doctors.
“There’s nothing we can do right now. We can’t get doctors out of nowhere. We have to treat it as a community,” Brown said.
“Right now we are not in a position to attract nurses and doctors. We rely on our overall healthcare system to provide them.”
About four hours northwest of Port Alberni, Port McNeill Mayor Gaby Wickstrom said her community is preparing for more disruptions to emergency services over the summer.
In recent months, Port McNeill Hospital has had its emergency room closed temporarily, or in diversion, meaning visits to the emergency room are treated, while patients arriving in an ambulance they are redirected to Port Hardy, half an hour away.
“We’re always worried because we have a minimum staff without any supplements,” Wickstrom said, adding that in a rural community, having even a sick health worker can lead to closure.
He said a simultaneous closure of the Port Hardy and Port McNeill emergency rooms would see patients redirected to Campbell River, two hours away.
“We’ve been told that from time to time we can end up with a diversion or a closure because it’s just the nature of the staffing crisis we’re in,” he said.
“It’s probably going to take a few months, it’s not an overnight solution.”