Like many other regions of the country, Alberta continues to be plagued by a shortage of medical professionals, despite efforts to curb turnover and increase recruitment, according to the Alberta Medical Association.
The province is lacking approximately 1,200 registered nurses and 750 family physicians, the association says. The most pressing shortage is occurring among front-line staff, such as registered nurses and family physicians
Margaret Hadley, president of the College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta, says the province is experiencing an "acute shortage" of nurses.
Too few nurses caring for too many patients is creating a work environment much more stressful than in the past, said Hadley. This impacts not only the quality of care available to patients but the entire health system.
Patients whose conditions would be serious enough to warrant putting them into intensive care are increasingly being placed under general admission or are discharged and offered homecare service.
"As a result, the patients that nurses care for in the hospital are very, very sick," Hadley said, adding that the current health care plan "will not meet the needs of the province."
In 2006, there were 29,000 registered nurses in Alberta, or one registered nurse for every 116 people, making it the third lowest ratio in the country according to the Canadian Nurses Association.
The average full-time unionized nurse — a third of whom are over 50 — makes approximately $66,000 a year.
The main cause of on-the-job stress is "role overload," or doing too many things at once, according to former registered nurse Jane Edgett.
The higher work load means nurses are less likely to be stationed in a certain area of the hospital and assigned particular patients. Instead, they are often shifted back and forth between different areas where they are most needed at the time, disrupting both the nurses and their patients.
"Quality work environments for nurses are crucial for patient outcomes, access to services, [follow up] care, and patient safety issues," said Dianne Tapp, acting dean of nursing at the University of Calgary.
The provincial government plans to create more seats for registered nurses in universities across the province, with the addition of 2,000 new seats targeted for 2012. However, applicants to nursing programs still outnumber the available seats, said Tapp.
Hiring more family physicians to diagnose and treat minor ailments as a first line of defense against more serious problems would help alleviate the burden on nurses, specialists and hospitals. However, one quarter of Calgary residents do not have access to a family doctor.
Of those who do, many will skip family doctors and go straight to specialists, which is often unnecessary, said David Swann, a physician and MP in Calgary-Mountain View.
Family doctors are capable of handling most common complaints, and increasing their numbers would allow them to treat more patients instead of just writing up referrals for specialists because of time constraints. This would reduce wait lists significantly, said Swann.
Only 30 per cent of recent medical school graduates have entered family medicine, according to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta. Reduced earning potential, they suggest, is partially responsible. On average, physicians bill the government $207,617 annually, but the costs of renting and maintaining an office can consume up to 50 per cent of their pre-tax earnings.
Swann, as well as the Calgary Health Region, has proposed increasing funding for community health centres, a more appealing alternative for family physicians.
The centres, which are common in BC and Ontario, bring front-line care and access to information under the same roof. The costs of maintaining a functioning office would be borne by the health region. The Calgary Health Region currently operates eleven of these, with Edmonton's Capital Health maintaining twenty.
However, increasing the number of health centres is not an immediate priority, according to Calgary Varsity Progressive Conservative MLA candidate Jen Diakiw, whose riding includes the province's largest medical school at the University of Calgary.
"We're just focusing now on putting in the new [hospital] beds. We are also increasing the number of spaces for nursing students, and of course it will take several years to see the results of this."
After a surge of patients overwhelmed the University of Alberta Hospital's emergency room in Edmonton recently, Capital Health decided to set up a triage tent outdoors where patients will be treated for a few weeks during the flu season, according to a CTV news report.
Over the Family Day long weekend, the Foothills Hospital, Calgary's largest, reported that 80 per cent of those in the emergency room throughout had been waiting for over six hours.
Feeds