“I will almost certainly come north this summer to assess UHNBC.”
Those were the words of BC Health Minister Adrian Dix during a May interview with MyPGNow.com regarding the severe issues being faced at PG’s University Hospital.
UHNBC is still facing a massive nursing staffing shortage and serious patient overcrowding in the hospital, to the point where they are regularly running up to 125% capacity.
Fast forward to now and still no sign of Dix, Prince George-Valemount MLA Shirley Bond is growing frustrated by the lack of action shown by his ministry to fix the problem.
“I think there is no doubt we are in the middle of a health care crisis across the province. As I travel throughout my constituency regularly up and down the Highway 16 corridor, people talk to us about the fact they are waiting longer to get procedures done and many of them don’t have family doctors.”
“You know, I asked that Minister Dix come up and sit down with people who have been impacted by the challenges in Northern Health and across the province with patients, nurses, and physicians who have good ideas and just want to be heard.”
“The minister has certainly not found the time to do that – we are headed back into the legislature very shortly for the fall session and I will be continuing to remind him about the challenges we face not only here, but right across the province,” added Bond.
In the long term, Dix previously talked about the province’s new plan to introduce mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios.
These ratios include one-to-one for critical care patients, one nurse for every two mental health patients, one-to-three for specialized care patients, and four-to-one for palliative care patients.
As of the spring, there were roughly 5,000 nursing vacancies in BC, that number would need to be exceeded in order for nursing ratios to be properly implemented.
The fall sitting of the BC Legislature kicks off October 3rd in Victoria.
– with files from Will Peters, MyPGNow.com staff