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<\/p>\n\u201cThe latest one, of course, is the obstetricians and obstetrics care,\u201d notes Hutchison, \u201cbut we have a number of other pressures in the hospital as well that are a problem \u2014 radiology being one of the big ones, for sure.\u201d <\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
Hutchison says a lot of the problems with staffing at community and regional hospitals relate to the ongoing effort to catch up to a previous dip in medical school enrollments from several years ago. <\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of that, it\u2019s easier for people to choose where they want to go and they\u2019ll choose to go to bigger cities or more attractive cities at times. Some places have more difficulty recruiting than others and, certainly in some specialties, that\u2019s what we\u2019re facing in Kamloops right now.\u201d <\/p>\n
Hutchison acknowledges there have been recent improvements in certain departments with acquiring more doctors, but other departments are short. <\/p>\n
\u201cGynecology seems to be struggling despite having seven in their group. Cardiology is lower than they would like to be. Emergency, we\u2019re actually short eight full-time physicians right now out of what we should have \u2014 30 full time equivalents and we\u2019re eight short.\u201d <\/p>\n
Again, pointing to recruitment and retention as a key part of the problem. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe know how great a place it is to live here. But we seem to be having trouble recruiting here for certain specialties compared to places like Kelowna,\u201d he says, noting that in some departments, Kelowna has two-to-three times to amount of physicians that the Kamloops hospital currently has. <\/p>\n
In Hutchison\u2019s opinion, relying on shelling out money to pay for locums to fill gaps in the long term may not improve the situation overall. <\/p>\n
\u201cJust throwing more money at the problem, that\u2019s being done with a lot of things and in a lot of places it has just caused different problems,\u201d he explains. \u201cFor example, paying large amounts for people to go work small town [emergency rooms] that would be closed otherwise but, because of the money being paid to locums, the local people don\u2019t get paid as well. And there\u2019s less incentive for anybody to move there because they don\u2019t get the locum incentives then. It\u2019s actually, in ways, made the problem worse.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Interior has made headlines with extreme burnout cited by outgoing physicians, but workplace strain is spread around the country and BC\u2019s former health minister, Terry Lake, feels some of that could be eased by working with evolving work-life expectations in the medical profession. <\/p>\n
\u201cPart of that problem is having one hand tied behind our backs with the Canada Health Act. It doesn\u2019t allow us to be creative and allow doctors to practice in the way that they might want to practice,\u201d he acknowledges. \u201cI think everything should be under discussion to see how we can improve the healthcare system in this country.\u201d <\/p>\n
In spite of the need for better resources, Hutchison says RIH is \u201cstill a great hospital to work in\u201d because of the healthcare teams it does have. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have some of the best trauma outcomes of any hospital in B.C. despite the relative lack of staffing. It\u2019s because we work together to find a way to make it work and make sure patients are taken care of well.\u201d <\/p>\n
There\u2019s no easy way out of current hospital issues, according to Hutchison, but something has to be figured out to make recruitment stick in the long term. <\/p>\n
\u201cI do think IHA has done a lot of good things but there\u2019s some big gaps that make it hard to perform the tasks of a tertiary hospital, and that definitely needs to continue to be worked on,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe latest one, of course, is the obstetricians and obstetrics care,\u201d notes Hutchison, \u201cbut we have a number…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-233415","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"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233415","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=233415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}