{"id":218363,"date":"2025-10-16T22:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T22:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/218363\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T22:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T22:47:09","slug":"b-c-s-health-care-system-suffers-another-unimaginable-blow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/218363\/","title":{"rendered":"B.C.\u2019s health care system suffers another unimaginable blow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

This week seven OB\/GYNs at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops notified the administration that they are resigning.Chris Young\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re pregnant and living in Kamloops, you are likely more concerned than the typical expectant woman about how it will all turn out.<\/p>\n

There is the normal worry that comes with any pregnancy. And then there is the apprehension that arrives when the entire staff of obstetricians and gynecologists at the hospital you are to give birth at have announced they are resigning.<\/p>\n

This week, the seven OB\/GYNs at Royal Inland Hospital notified the administration that they are resigning over unaddressed concerns<\/a> around unsafe workloads, staff shortages and an absence of support. They remain on the job for now as they must provide 90 days\u2019 notice of their intent to leave.<\/p>\n

If you live in B.C., you are by now used to a certain amount of chaos and uncertainty in the health care system. You are used to not being able to find a doctor and having to go to an emergency room to get concerns addressed that a family physician would normally handle. And you are also used to many of those same ERs having to close occasionally<\/a> because of a lack of staff. In the meantime, alarms have been sounded for years by those working in the province\u2019s cancer agency, upset about untenable working conditions caused by staff shortages that are creating longer wait times for care.<\/p>\n

But even against that depressing and enraging backdrop, having an entire department of OB\/GYNs say they\u2019re packing it in because they can\u2019t tolerate the working conditions is shocking.<\/p>\n

B.C. seeks to assure patients OB\/GYN services available after resignations<\/a><\/p>\n

This is where, of course, we call out the provincial NDP government for what is occurring. And they do deserve blame, just as their Liberal predecessors deserve to share fault for not preparing the province for the grey tsunami of an aging population everyone said was coming (not to mention hundreds of thousands of new immigrants), which have put an unsustainable burden on the health care system.<\/p>\n

The call for help from B.C. health care providers has been happening for years. The government always promises to do more, to bring in more nurses and doctors \u2013 and some do arrive \u2013 but it\u2019s never enough to fill the gaping staffing void that exists. The fact is B.C. is competing for talent with just about every other province in the country.<\/p>\n

Some aspects of the government response are just infuriating. The other day, for instance, B.C. Premier David Eby<\/a> announced that the province was set to open the first new medical school<\/a> in Western Canada in decades. The initial class of 48 students will be welcomed next August. Of course, this is great news. But why has it taken so long for this to happen? This isn\u2019t Mr. Eby\u2019s fault. This should have occurred under his predecessor, John Horgan, or even before that under the Liberals. <\/p>\n

Everyone saw the crisis that is now afoot coming years ago. If B.C. was cranking out doctors from a new medical school five or 10 years ago, the province wouldn\u2019t be in the mess it is now.<\/p>\n

But there is something else that needs to be acknowledged: Health care is expensive. Doctors aren\u2019t cheap. The health care industry generally is insanely costly. So are roads and bridges and schools and new dams and a million other things that the public relies on the government to provide. B.C. is already racking up debt at a record rate. Trying to address the emergency in the health care system isn\u2019t going to make any of that easier. <\/p>\n

Pretty soon people are going to have to prioritize their wants and needs when it comes to government action. I would think a proper health care system and a proper education system would top the list of what people want most. But you can\u2019t have it all, no matter what politicians tell you at election time. <\/p>\n

The problems in B.C.\u2019s health care system are more dire in rural areas, like the North or even parts of the Interior. Right now in Kamloops, the local health authority is having to offer locums and OB\/GYNs from elsewhere $7,100 a day, with overnight premiums, to help stanch the crisis. I believe that some sort of peace can be brokered with the Kamloops OB\/GYNs threatening to leave with more money and more support. Sometimes all it takes is the threat of total mayhem to focus the mind.<\/p>\n

Maybe part of the problem in this case is poor local management. Maybe the current provincial Health Minister deserves the blame, or her predecessor or her predecessor\u2019s predecessor. <\/p>\n

I just know that these stories aren\u2019t going away. If anything, they are likely to become far more common. B.C. is in the midst of a health care crisis and there is no easy fix or way out of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: This week seven OB\/GYNs at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops notified the administration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392,2922],"class_list":{"0":"post-218363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-noastack"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}