A senior in BC’s Department of Home Affairs has died after a cardiac arrest while the only ambulance was dispatched to another town and the hospital’s emergency department was closed, prompting the community to reconsider Emergency services.
The mayor of Ashcroft, BC, told CTV News she had a lengthy conversation with BC Emergency Medical Services officials who were in town about an unrelated matter, but met with her about the one. died on Sunday.
“There’s going to be a full review of what happened Sunday to see where all the different ambulances are operating in the area, what happened, to see if there’s anything,” said Barbara Roden. what can be learned from that,” said Barbara Roden.
“I suspect there’s nothing anyone would want better than being able to make sure this doesn’t happen again, and that’s a guarantee that absolutely no one can give.”
Roden said the woman lives in an assisted living facility next to Ashcroft hospital, but the emergency department is closed, the nearest hospital is an hour from Kamloops. As a result, the ambulance arrived too late, despite the firefighters’ best efforts.
“My fear is that this perfect storm of events could happen again here in Ashcroft or in another small community where healthcare is sometimes quite precarious,” she said.
EMPLOYEE IS NOT ADDRESSED PROBLEM
While the issues that drive nurses out of health care are international, and BC’s own pressures and issues on hiring and retaining healthcare workers are complex, a Interior mayor Another agency said how health and government officials might address it is common.
“There are a lot of people out there who are not mentally healthy right now, and understandably so: they are working in a pressure cooker environment,” said Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell. “We’re going through two years of COVID and they’ve been working with short headcounts for a horrible long time, so sooner or later it has to give and we’re seeing that now.”
He added that in addition to the stressful leave and summer break, there is no doubt in his mind that rising COVID-19 infections are also keeping people out of the workforce. .
Despite the impact the latest Omicron variant is having on hospital staff as well as the growing number of hospitalized patients with severe symptoms, the provincial government has made no move to reinstate the measures. public health and even refuse to disclose to the public how British Columbians feel. about those measures.
HEALTH CARE IMPACT ON THE SMALL POPULATION IN THE Town
Whether it’s the mass resignations in North BC, or the now frequent weekend closures of seriously understaffed hospitals in the Home Office of Health, Roden says the availability of care health in small towns is becoming a big and chronic problem, it is changing the structure of communities that is aging. People make difficult decisions to retire closer to cities.
“It broke their hearts to have to leave but they had to go,” she said.
