Doctors and residents in the north and rural of Manitoba say that medical care in their communities should be a federal election priority this year, since emergency rooms continue to close and patients travel more and more to receive care.
The emergency room at the Morris General Hospital, 60 kilometers south of Winnipeg, closed indefinitely in September 2023. It is one of the various rural mannitobas in obtaining closure in recent years due to the shortage of health workers.
“You can go there with someone halfway, and all it has is one thing at the door: the emergency is closed,” said Eileen Klassen, 78, who lives in the hospital path.
“They are not doctors or nurses. They work hard.”
Klassen is lucky because after the emergency room, he experienced a stroke and survived. Instead of being urgently taken to the local hospital on the street, it was transported to the Boundary Trails Health Center near Winkler, man. – About 45 kilometers away.
The closure of the emergency room also refers to Megan Adams, which lives with multiple sclerosis, and whose son had an allergic reaction to Kiwi last summer.
“When his son’s life is being threatened and has no choice but to call an ambulance and take his son to a 45 -minute trip to receive treatment … it can be quite problematic,” Adams said.
Accessibility to medical care is among the main Adams priorities in this federal choice.
NATIONAL STRATEGY necessary, doctors say
Doctors Manitoba says that this province falls secondly in doctors Per capita, with 219 doctors per 100,000 people, according to 2023 data from the Canadian Health Information Institute.
For family doctors, Manitoba occupies the last place among the provinces with 107 doctors per 100,000 people. In the north and rural of Manitoba, there are 94 doctors per 100,000 residents.
The growing shortage of doctors and health workers is the reason why Rural Physicians Society of Canada You are asking all federal parties to create a national strategy of Rural Health Labor Force, finance a skill training program and implement a national licensed system that would facilitate doctors to practice throughout the country.
The NDP said in a statement sent by email that the party would bring more doctors to the areas of the north and rural by supporting the Pan-Canadian licenses. They would also create regional and remote medicine schools, completely implement Jordan’s principle and provide subsidies to rural family doctors to help them remain in communities, a spokesman said.
CBC did not receive news from the conservative or liberal parties before the publication.
A long -term skills training program is needed
Neepawa, Man., Family doctor Nichelle Desilets knows that patients travel more and more for medical care.
“I think that, unfortunately, it has been accepted as the new standard both in my community and in the surrounding areas,” said Desilets, who is also the elected president of doctors Manitoba.
Although he acknowledges that provincial and municipal governments also have great roles to perform to attract rural doctors, he says that medical care is also a federal electoral problem.
“I know there are many people who are stressed by economic concerns, for the tariffs of the United States … but we cannot let medical attention fall too low on the priority list. That has to remain at the top,” he said.
Last week, Desilets made a presentation at the Campus of the School of Medicine of the Center for Health Sciences of the University of Manitoba, hoping to convince a dozen medical students to work in the northern and rural areas.
Desilets explained how rural doctors are not only trained in family medicine, but also may need experience in emergency medicine, geriatrics, obstetrics, palliative care and surgery.
The president of the Society of Rural Physicians, Dr. Gavin Parker, says that this is one of the main reasons why doctors in rural areas decide to leave: they are “feeling uncomfortable with the clinical scenarios they could find.”
He accredits a recent National Pilot Program for a year for helping 342 doctors working in indigenous and rural communities to improve their skills according to their needs.
The Federal Government contributed $ 7.4 million to the advanced skills training program, which Parker says it covered training and travel costs and paid the locums, doctors who meet doctors while they are out.
“It was a great success project,” said Parker, who practices in Pincher Creek, Alta.
This national coordinated program was based on others offered in some provinces, including Alberta, said Parker. During his career, he says he has helped him to train again in anesthesia and heart stress tests.
Doctors say that rural medical care ‘in crisis’
Parker advocates a National Training Program in Skills to become permanent, together with the creation of a National Strategy for Rural Health Work Force to ensure, in part, that Medicine Schools support and train students for available work and in places where they are needed.
He is also asking for Pan-Canadian licenses, so doctors face less administrative and cost loads to practice in different jurisdictions.
Dr. Sarah Newbery, a generalist rural family doctor in Marathon, Ontario, agrees. She describes the care of northern and rural health as “in crisis.”
Part of the daily challenges you experience is related to the difficulties in finding locums when doctors get sick, go on vacation or retire.
Newbery urges the next federal government to ensure that there is a path from end to end for doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, social workers, laboratory technicians and more, from how they are educated to how they are recruited and retained, to work in northern and rural areas.
Without a strategy, Newbery and Parker say that exhaustion and fatigue among rural doctors will accelerate, and patients will increasingly flood urban health facilities and lengthening the waiting times of the emergency department there.
“We have the opportunity to focus on how we support and stabilize rural health services, and that will make it more attractive to people who work here,” said Newbery, who co -presided the Human Resources Committee on the health of society.
Klassen believes that people in Morris, Man, and surrounding areas deserve a better hospital with more services.
“I worry a lot since I had that stroke,” Klassen said.
Southern Health continues to face challenges to recruit rural family doctors, but efforts are ongoing, even to recruit internationally trained doctors, said a spokesman for the health authority in an email.
They say that the health authority is working to reopen the emergency room of the Morris Hospital, although it is not clear when it will be.
At 78, Klassen says that he is not going to move now, and he hopes that the conversation about medical care does not forget rural cities like his.
Doctors and residents in rural and northern Manitoba areas say that medical care in their communities should be a priority in these federal elections, since emergency rooms continue to close and patients travel farther to receive care.
