An absence of physicians idles much of Rankin’s gleaming new $16 million health centre

RANKIN INLET – Health care providers in Rankin Inlet have a gleaming, well-equipped, two-storey health centre.

What they really need now are some doctors.

The first floor of the Rankin Inlet health centre is what you'd expect from any hospital. Receptionists take information from newly-arrived patients, while others sit in the waiting area, looking tired and concerned.

A girl of perhaps 10 with a heavily-autographed cast on her leg rolls through in a wheelchair, to a room where a nurse will saw the cast off.

"It's tough because we have these beautiful rooms and equipment but no permanently stationed doctors to work in them," said nurse director Linda Sawyers.

Recently there were two doctors in the community on locums, one based in Rankin Inlet and the other touring other Kivalliq communities, but they finished their contracts.

Until they can be replaced, nurses work out of 12 examination rooms on the ground floor, treating minor problems and conducting tests and x-rays.

One the second floor, rooms sit bright, clean, new, and empty of patients. Instead of holding recovering patients, they store supplies from a recent sealift order: food, intravenous supplies, bandages and the like.

"The plan is eventually to have inpatient beds," Sawyers said.

In the meantime, the facilities sit mostly empty, including a kitchen stocked with shiny new equipment that's never been used to prepare meals for patients.

"Not yet, but it will be," Sawyers said.

But at the end of the hall on the second floor, a pair of birthing rooms sit bright and tidy, waiting for the next mom in labour to come in.

The second room is typically used for mothers to rest and visit with family after labour, though it can be used for delivery if needed. It's even equipped with a chair that can be converted into a bed if a family member needs to spend the night.

Sawyers said the health centre's three midwives, who work in Rankin and also travel to other Kivalliq communities when needed, are vital to the health centre.

"Without them we'd be sending everybody to Winnipeg," she said.

Completed in 2005 at a cost of $16 million, the Kivalliq health centre is still an improvement over Rankin's old clinic. The ambulance has its own garage to unload patients without having to expose them to the outdoors. The injured can be rolled into one of two fully-stocked emergency rooms.

It also has its own laboratory with a staff of three who can return test results to patients quickly.