Doctors dispute claims of improved emergency services

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Published: March 30, 1995

REGINA – Saskatchewan’s health minister says rural health emergency services are better than they used to be, but some small-town doctors disagree.

Lorne Calvert said improving the provincial road ambulance system and creating a network of “first responders” (local first aid people who can quickly respond to an emergency) have given rural Saskatchewan better emergency services even though his government has closed 52 acute-care hospitals.

“I think that’s garbage if they think they are trying to pretend that they can replace physicians and trained nurses” with first responders and ambulances, said Herbert doctor Shiresh Kasset.

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“There’s no doubt (rural emergency services) have regressed, and it’s time they admitted that,” said Kassett.

Once a hospital goes, the local doctor is usually soon to follow, he said. While the hospital facility survives, reborn as a “health centre,” without a doctor it will not be able to deal with some emergencies and people could die, he said.

“I have seen some patients here that have been so ill that a one-hour delay in getting them to (a doctor) would have been disastrous,” he said. “They would not have made it to a facility even half an hour away.”

Recently, he said he treated a patient who had a severe allergic reaction to Aspirin. By the time the person was brought to him “he had turned blue” and had almost stopped breathing.

First responders would not know what to do in such a situation, he said.

Kassett said emergency services might be better in areas that have not had hospitals or doctors before, but they are worse in places that have lost their doctors.

Ponteix doctor Joe Barretto also challenged the idea that Saskatchewan has an excellent road ambulance system.

He said Ponteix lost its ambulance service at the end of January and by mid-March still did not have a replacement service.

Young doctors moving on

Barretto has stayed in Ponteix even though it has lost its acute-care hospital, but younger doctors are unlikely to stay if there is no hospital in their community, he said.

Vanguard mayor Dorothy Saunderson said her village lost its doctor once the hospital lost its acute-care beds.

“He had to leave, not because he wanted to, but because he had children and he had to make a living for them,” she said.

Now a doctor from Swift Current, about 50 kilometres away, comes in three times a week to see patients. The health centre is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the only other people who can deal with emergencies are first responders.

Saunderson said first responders are “better than nothing” but “I don’t see how they can take the place of registered nurses and doctors that have years of training.”

Because Vanguard no longer has an acute-care hospital or a doctor, some elderly people have been moving to places that have better medical facilities, she said. This is proof that rural emergency services are not better, as Saskatchewan’s health minister claimed, said Saunderson.

“Mr. Calvert does not live in a small place like Vanguard or he would not be making a statement like that.”

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Ed White

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