Sam Michiel is very concerned about a pediatrician shortage now resulting in service disruptions at Kelowna General Hospital.
“It scares me to think this is going on,” Michiel said. “”What if your child got sick? What would happen to them, what would happen to your family, would you Have to go to Vancouver, could you afford it?”
Michiel is a Kelowna mother of two.
She’s especially worried given that one of her two boys has a compromised immune system due to a rare genetic condition.
Earlier this year the 11-year old boy ended up being admitted to hospital twice due to an infection.
The pediatrician shortage has prompted the Kelowna Emergency Department Physician Group to put out a public advisory warning that on Sept. 16 through 18, there will be no pediatrician on call for the ER (emergency room) with further disruption dates expected right through to the end of the year.
“What if Lucas gets sick in the meantime and there is no doctor on call,” Michiel said.
The advisory states that pediatric consultations and admissions to the pediatric ward will not be possible at Kelowna’s ER during the service disruptions and that a pediatrician will not be available to come and assess pediatric patients at the bedside.
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It also means that more critical or complex cases will need to be diverted to other communities for care.
“If we’re unable to admit them through not having a provider at the hospital, then they would be admitted to one of our other hospitals and the care team would arrange the appropriate transport to the other site,” said Dr. Douglas Smith, vice-president of medicine for Interior Health (IH).
Smith said anytime services have to be reduced or disrupted it is a concern, but he assures the public that care will be there when needed.
“The safe delivery of care for our pediatric patients is our top concern,” Smith said. “The advice is that if you have a concern that you should be coming to hospital for, you should still present to the emergency department at KGH.”
He added that pediatric patients will be assessed and triaged to determine appropriate care.
IH has recruited three pediatricians over the last nine months and continues with its recruitment efforts to meet the needs.
‘There are just generally workforce shortages across the province right now. So we need to, we need to look into the future, and in the immediate time, we have to think about how can we strengthen and stabilize the services that we have, what’s the intermediate term look like? What’s the long term look like?” Smith said. “So there are strategies in place to address all of those issues.”
The situation at KGH is another example of the crisis in emergency rooms right across the province as physicians sound the alarm about concerning conditions in ER wards.
In the case of Kelowna and the shortage of pediatrician, the ER physician group stated it felt it was necessary to inform the community of the current situation to “avoid confusion and align expectations”.
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