POV hospital in turmoil

As it lurches from one crisis to the next, Puvirnituq’s Inuulitsivik Hospital is close to collapse, strained by the same burdens and conflicts that are crushing the region’s entire system of health and social services.

With its top management gutted, essential medical positions vacant or in flux and a staff that’s increasingly stressed and angry, many are asking why Quebec’s health and social services department doesn’t step in and help put order back into Inuulitsivik.

Many question the board of directors’ track record in dealing with problems.

“You can count on them to make the wrong decision,” said a doctor. “Their first impulse is to make the wrong decision because they don’t think through the problem first.”

Other sources within Inuulitsivik, who say they can’t risk being named in the Nunatsiaq News for fear of losing their jobs or enduring other repercussions, describe the atmosphere within the 25-bed hospital as “terrible,” “poisonous” and “tense.”

Relations between Inuit and Qallunaat employees are at a new low, in a period when violent incidents against non-Inuit in Salluit, Kangiqsujuaq and Kuujjuaq have hiked unease between the two groups.

“Inuit and Québécois are both xenophobic – suspicious of outsiders,” said an employee. “Now it’s worse than ever.”

The Inuulitsivik health board has 400 employees working at health and social services clinics in seven Hudson Bay communities, at the rehabilitation center in Inukjuak, and at the Inuulitsivik Hospital in Puvirnituq.

The most recent round of troubles at Inuulitsivik started in mid-January when the acting head of nursing at the hospital was relieved of his position in a dispute over how to deal with a long-term mentally ill patient.

This move occurred at around the same time that several other top administrators at the hospital and at the Northern Health Module in Montreal, which provides patient services to Nunavimmiut in Montreal, were removed or did not have their contracts renewed.

Other medical staff, including doctors, nurses and dentists, as well as administrators at Inuulitsivik, have left or will soon leave their jobs permanently or for extended periods.

The staff upheavals at the hospital, which occurred from Jan. 17 to Feb. 5, are euphemistically called a “special event” in a March 3 communiqué signed by the executive director, Eli Weetaluktuk.

This communiqué is written in a form of English that is hard for any outsider to comprehend because it contains a lot of bureaucratic jargon, awkward phrasing, and many unexplained references to past actions and events.

Yet hospital employees understand the gist of its message clearly – that Inuulitsivik is being reorganized “to ensure consistency and continuity of service.” At the same time, Weetaluktuk is trying to reassure employees “who perform in a moral and ethical manner” that they are appreciated.

The communiqué was a last-ditch effort, some say, to quell a mass departure of staff from the hospital.

But many remaining employees are still upset and nervous, not least of all because a specialist in security measures, Marty Croitoru, is evaluating the roles and performance of all hospital staff for Inuulitsivik’s board of directors.

According to an employee, this evaluation has created a “reign of terror” within the hospital and further escalated tensions.

“It should be done by an outside, independent group,” said one employee.

What should be done, according to another insider, is to bring in a new top management team, even if they have to be brought up from southern Quebec or elsewhere in Nunavik on rotation, to be at the hospital in Puvirnituq daily, to fill the vacuum at the top and assist Weetaluktuk in his difficult job.

This latest wave of turmoil is just one of many to affect Inuulitsivik over the past years – from massive operational deficits to huge payroll errors.

A year ago, Inuulitsivik was working against a legally-enforced, 99-day deadline for fixing employee safety problems.

Jeannie May, executive director of Nunavik’s regional board of health and social services, said the board is “concerned” about the situation at Inuulitsivik.

May said a new strategic plan for the region’s entire health and social services system, which has been two years in the making, contains many suggestions for improvements at Inuulitsivik.

But May said major changes are on hold until after the strategic plan is approved and adopted later this spring.

Chaos at Inuulitsivik is not the regional health and social services board’s sole challenge, either: the exodus of experienced doctors from the Tulattavik Hospital, which serves Nunavik’s Ungava Bay communities, has left health services there in disarray.

As a result, all pregnant women from the Ungava coast are sent to Montreal to deliver – a return to a pattern of health care that hasn’t been seen for more than 20 years.