One week after a physician spoke about staffing challenges at Kelowna General Hospital, an Okanagan politician has joined the health-care fray.
On June 2, Dr. Jeff Eppler spoke to Global News about KGH, the Okanagan’s largest hospital. An emergency-room physician, Eppler said the ER is often operating without a full complement of nurses.
He also mentioned there aren’t enough acute-care beds to meet the needs of a growing and older community.
“I’ve really never seen morale lower and I’ve never seen such high staff turnover as I’ve seen recently,” Eppler told Global News.
This week, Renee Merrifield, the MLA for Kelowna-Mission, brought up the issue after a separate memo was leaked to the media regarding staffing issues at KGH.
The memo said the hospital’s oncology department is at 55 per cent of staffing levels, and will be until at least the fall. Oncology is the study of cancer.
“From practically Day 1 after being elected, I asked the health minister (Adrian Dix) about the funding for a province-wide cancer plan,” said Merrifield, who was elected in October 2020 and serves as the BC Liberals’ opposition critic for environment and climate change. She was previously the Liberals’ opposition critic for health.
“This 10-year plan has been in the works for five years. Despite repeated requests to see this plan from myself and colleagues, the health minister claims he’s still working on it.”
Merrifield continued, saying “it appears it’s faster to get a ($1 billion) museum project done and approved than it is to fund cancer diagnosis and treatment in this province.”
According to the Canadian Cancer Society, two in five Canadians are expected to develop cancer during their lifetime, and that about one in four Canadians (26 per cent of men, 22 per cent of women) are expected to die from cancer.
“Now here we are, learning the truth about how dire things have become in Kelowna for B.C. Cancer,” said Merrifield.
“I am very supportive and appreciative of the doctors, nurses and other staff as they’ve fought to keep their department above water and struggled to get their own PPE in the midst of a pandemic, all while providing world-class treatment.
“Now they are rightly sounding the alarm bell because no one seems to be listening in Victoria and lives are at risk.”
She asked: “Time is of the essence when treating cancer. We know this. Time is of the essence to solve this crisis in our oncology department. What will it take to get the premier to act?”