Where have the paramedics gone, Tununiq MLA asks
Extra health-care support provided during COVID-19 pandemic discontinued last year, says health minister
Tununiq MLA Karen Nutarak is concerned about unfilled positions at the Pond Inlet health centre. (File photo)
Tununiq MLA Karen Nutarak wants the Health Department to bring paramedics back to communities to help backfill vacant health-care positions.
The Health Department rolled out the measure in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, in response to widespread nursing shortages. Paramedics were sent in pairs to communities where health centres were closed due to this issue.
“Having the paramedics working in our communities was working,” Nutarak told Nunatsiaq News in an email Tuesday.
“The department often changes what is working in the communities.”
She pointed to the fact that in Pond Inlet, the health centre’s extended hours are suspended until March 17 due to a lack of staff. Appointments can still be made between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Nutarak raised the issue Feb. 20 in the legislative assembly.
“Paramedics are very beneficial to the community,” she told Health Minister John Main when asking why they’d been pulled from Pond Inlet.
Main responded that the Health Department moved last year to “a more structured approach” in deploying paramedics.
“The use of paramedics began as a response to staff shortages and as a way to make sure that we can keep our health centres open and keep services available,” Main said.
Now, directors within each region will identify which communities need paramedics. From there, they submit a request to the paramedic contractor for staff for that specific community.
Hamlets with historically higher emergency care visits, high nursing vacancies and risks of severe service disruptions, are among the factors considered when deciding where to send paramedics, said Chelsea Halvorson, spokesperson with the Department of Health.
“It’s not working,” Nutarak said of the change. “Why change what was working well?”
She said every community has nurse staffing issues and it’s not uncommon for health centres to reduce services to care only for emergencies.
“Often new employees like to change things within their control to what they think is good for the people of Nunavut,” Nutarak said. “Often they are wrong.”
In the legislative assembly, she also highlighted the need for physicians in Pond Inlet and asked Main when the hamlet’s health-care positions will be fully staffed.
“We do have ongoing challenges with our staffing of the mental health nurse positions, not just in Pond Inlet but in many locations,” Main said in response.
He said job sharing, using casual staff and having 20 physicians who travel among the communities are ways health-care needs are being addressed for communities without a resident physician.
“a more structured approach” – Aka we have no money left in our budget and cant afford having that many paramedics around so we leave positions vacant.
Now I am aware only so much transfer payments can come from the federal govt, but I think most people are also aware money is being lost to incompetence and bureaucratic processes.
If the federal gov’t is only going to pony up so much per year and stand their ground, we are going to have to come up with a more efficient way of running Health.
Nunavut needs to start generating its own revenue to pay for services
There are no vacant positions. The paramedics were contractors.
Bring back doctors so we who live in iqaluit don’t have to stare at i nice new hospital that is good for nothing but child birth. Instead have to put our lives on hold and travel south to a crappy larga where the kids run wild during the day and the drunks at night then go to a hospital that gives you the attiude like your on vacation. Thats not medicare it’s absolute torture!
“she also highlighted the need for physicians in Pond Inlet”
Yeah let’s put resident physicians in these small communities. Last i checked doctors who would willingly move to pond inlet full time are a dime a dozen?
It’s okay, they push out the physicians that have been coming to the community for years, in favour of giving to to new doctors as a perk!
Because the community healthcare isn’t important. Continuity of care isn’t important.
But giving new doctors a perk is great! Even if they don’t actually care about community health.
The fact is, people up here don’t want to work. People have opportunities to attend post secondary education for free and become doctors, nurses, paramedics, teachers etc… but people rather stay home and collect welfare. There is no incentive to work.
The only thing keeping this from getting worse is the fact that a lot of GN employees feel a personal loyalty to each other- so they keep going back.
It’s not the pay- which is often late, incorrect, or punitive. I knew one nurse who was charged three months of ‘back rent’, which they had failed to remove from previous paychecks. Travel pay can take upwards of six months to arrive, and the amount of hoops required to make simple claims is absurd. It took me a better part of a month and about 95 emails to prove that yes, I did in fact have lieu time.
Home Care services (among others) have been banned from any overtime. That means that patients who need, say, dressing changes, or supervised medication, or any other after hours care have to get themselves to the clinic under the own power, or hope the community has an ambulance.
The amount of overtime a lot of CHNs get simply because of the call volume brought on this sort of policy. Paramedics eased the strain, but at the end of the day, the GN was understaffed, and the treatment of employees only made it worse.
How can you ban people from overtime? This is an absurd idea. Can the union help here ( i know they are practically useless most of the time, but they do have their moments).
Essentially, they say that all OT has be pre-approved. At the regional level,the policy is to say no to all requests.
The bigger issue not even being discussed in this article is that the GN currently has contracts in place with contractors to have paramedics in communities. The GN is violating the current contract to kick paramedics out, which hurts the community, and hurts everyone by the legal battles for the breach of contract deliberately caused by the GN in their efforts to limit or erase paramedics. Anyone who has voiced this in social media to inform people has been threatened by the GN (through their employer) and told to stay quiet . They are intentionally wasting money with inevitable legal battles to get rid of paramedics who are currently already under contract.
A physician with a degree, education and experience would be willing to live and work in Nunavut?!!🤣🤣🤣😭😭
I read an article in Nunatsiaq News a few months back written by a nurse who had (done time) worked in Nunavut.
“Nunavut is scary” was the article title.
In it, she warned others in her profession to stay away from Nunavut.
Apparently there are others who had left the profession all together from trying to work in Nunavut. 🤕