The shortage of physicians in Estevan and the immediate area has now reached a critical level.
The administration and staff at St. Joseph's Hospital are doing their best to keep the emergency room open and operating as smoothly as possible, but the call has now gone out to the general public seeking some consideration and co-operation.
"Unless it is a true, and I mean true emergency, refrain from using the emergency room services at the hospital," said St. Joseph's executive director Normand Poirier.
The next few months are going to be "tough sledding," Poirier said.
There is light at the end of the tunnel in the form of pending arrivals of some new physicians, but in the meantime the city is being served by just seven or eight physicians and sometimes as few as five which is putting them under severely demanding conditions and stressful situations.
"These doctors are putting in very long hours as it is. They have their clinic hours and hospital hours and then they're on call at night and the emergency room is seeing between 50 and 60 people every night, that's just too much," said Poirier.
At least one new physician is expected to be Estevan by October, but that doesn't alleviate the current situation, the director said.
Don Kindopp, chairman of the board of directors for St. Joseph's, who attended a Monday afternoon press conference with Poirier, said the current shortage has certainly been a bump in the road for the group that is attempting to elevate St. Joe's to a regional hospital status.
"The challenge is to get through the summer months," said Poirier.
Dr. Alin Lenferna, vice-president of medicine for the Sun Country Health Region, is well aware of the critical situation in Estevan and has attempted to recruit other doctors in the region to come to Estevan to temporarily help out. He is taking a shift or two in the St. Joseph's emergency room himself along with an Arcola-based physician to try to release some of the pressure on the local doctors.
The emergency room rotation is quite workable in terms of nursing and support staff, said Poirier. The nursing shortage is not as severe as it once was, which certainly helps, but the doctor shortage is very worrying.
"In fact this coming weekend could be a real tough one," said Poirier. "The current group is working like Trojans but they also have family issues that have to be tended to; they can't always be on call, all the time. It's going to be a difficult summer. So if the public can get their regular medical issues handled through the clinics, it would help the emergency room situation because these people are burning out."
Poirier had stated earlier that the current physician complement of between seven and eight is about half of what would be normally acceptable to serve a city the size of Estevan and the immediate area that covers a population of about 30,000.
Weyburn and Weyburn General Hospital is currently served by 12 doctors, which is considered proper. Estevan requires about 14 to be comfortable and capable of moving forward.
"Because of a lack of doctors in Arcola, Kipling, Redvers the people from there are coming here," said Poirier.
Cal Tant, chief executive officer for Sun Country Health Region, said late last week that "the bottom line is a shortage of doctors. There are a lot of recruitment efforts going on and there is that light at the end of the tunnel. You know you can recruit like crazy for over a year with no tangible results and then all of a sudden, a bunch will come out of the woodwork. We're getting interest from doctors not just for Estevan, but also for Arcola, Redvers and Carlyle, but we still need that commitment from them and with a couple of exceptions, we haven't received that yet. We can't announce any new doctor arrivals until their bodies are on the plane or their feet are on the ground here."
As far as the possibility of having to suspend emergency services in Estevan is concerned, Poirier said "we're not there yet, but if it keeps going the way it has, it's not unrealistic because they're stretched pretty thin."
He said if the emergency service suspension had to be imposed, the media would be alerted right away and they would attempt to inform the public as efficiently as possible.
Poirier said Dr. Lenferna and organizations such as the Estevan and District Board of Tourism, Trade and Commerce have been doing a lot of work in the background attempting to recruit physicians. He said if the effort is greeted with success, then it is incumbent on the city and the population to make them comfortable and wanting to settle down in the city, rather than choosing to move on within a year or two.
"We need some advocacy groups," Poirier said.
"We found ourselves in a similar circumstance about five years ago, and we're repeating it. We'd like to get away from that cycle," said Kindopp.
Recruitment incentives such as building lots or residential properties, free use of vehicles, computers and office supplies and free entertainment items are all part of the local physician recruitment package.
"I know this isn't the answer people are looking for. Somewhere the recruitment efforts will pay off, but in the meantime, the next three months are going to be very difficult," said Poirier.
The two men said that one new physician, Dr. Charles Omosigho, has made a commitment to come to Estevan this fall and should be established in a practice by late September or early October and there were, as noted earlier, several other expressions of interest from doctors currently working outside of Canada as well as five or six working in Saskatchewan or in other regions of the country.
