North American studies and reviews<\/a> have shown adding a TLP to an ER shortens patient wait times and can prevent some patients from leaving without being seen \u2014 but does not address the underlying problems of staff and space shortages.<\/p>\nPledge for TLPs not in good faith, AMA president says<\/p>\n
The AMA\u2019s section of emergency medicine, which negotiates working conditions for ER doctors, hasn\u2019t reached an agreement with the Alberta government about employment conditions for doctors working as TLPs, section president Dr. Warren Thirsk said. He said the parties have not met to negotiate.<\/p>\n
Thirsk said the government is trying to sign up doctors individually under conditions that some believe could put physicians at legal risk while they see patients in a waiting room. He recommends that ER doctors not sign up to work as TLPs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lack of consistent, real engagement has not made me feel confident that it was anything more than politics to announce something that would fix the problem,\u201d Thirsk said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
He said the provincial government has dismissed those liability concerns.<\/p>\n
AMA president Dr. Brian Wirzba said Wednesday that the government is introducing bureaucratic hurdles to make it harder to reach a deal on TLP working conditions, such as telling them to negotiate certain terms with two different health ministries. He called the hurdles \u201ca slap in the face\u201d to ER doctors who are already overworked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s just a frustration that we are working with a party to try and actually improve things for Alberta patients and we’re stymied at it,\u201d Wirzba said.<\/p>\n
The impasse comes as Alberta doctors\u2019 four-year master agreement with physicians is set to expire on March 31.<\/p>\n
Thirsk said Wednesday he\u2019s concerned that the government\u2019s approach to negotiating with doctors hasn\u2019t improved since 2020, when Alberta’s United Conservative government tore up its agreement with doctors and imposed a new one many physicians opposed.<\/p>\n
Last month, Warner said the provincial government had already signed contracts directly with some doctors in November to work in the TLP role at hospitals.<\/p>\n
CBC News asked Warner and Acute Care Alberta seven times in the last two weeks how many doctors had signed contracts to work as TLPs, at what locations and when. Neither authority directly answered those questions.<\/p>\n
Alberta Health Services, which runs most provincial hospitals, referred questions to Acute Care Alberta. Covenant Health did not respond to the questions this week.<\/p>\n
Opposition says government ER response too slow<\/p>\n
Alberta NDP MLA and hospital and surgical services critic Sarah Hoffman said the government\u2019s response to the pressure on ERs is inadequate.<\/p>\n
She said it\u2019s been nearly two months since Sreekumar died in the Grey Nuns Hospital and the government is still talking about recruiting.<\/p>\n
Hoffman repeated the Opposition\u2019s call for the government to set up an emergency command centre, and to recall MLAs to the legislature to debate the government\u2019s response.<\/p>\n
Announcing the TLP doctors \u201cfeels like more of a communications exercise than an actual strategy around how to address the significant health and safety concerns that Albertans have about their emergency departments right now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Thirsk, who works at Edmonton\u2019s Royal Alexandra Hospital ER, said although a wave of influenza cases has subsided, there are still patients waiting in ER beds to be admitted. On his last shift, there were about 30 people in the waiting room at a time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s still patients in the hallway. There are still bad cases, and near misses happening every day,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 5 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-479944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479944","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=479944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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