A group of doctors in Prince George has stepped up to cover unfilled shifts in the city’s University Hospital of Northern B.C. amid a shortage of obstetric and gynecological specialists that threatened disruptions to the region’s main hub for maternity care.
But a doctor in the city says that’s no thanks to — and almost in spite of — the work of administrators with Northern Health.
Dr. Kassandra Joss is the acting lead for the GP obstetrical group at University Hospital.
She says Northern Health was well aware that staffing troubles were likely because her group had alerted the health authority back in January.
Last week, the hospital put out a bulletin to tell patients that there would be some disruptions in maternity care starting in August, with the gaps not yet filled.
It said some patients with “high-risk pregnancies” may need to be transferred to other centres, at no cost to them, to receive care.
Prince George is a regional hub and the referral centre for the north. High-risk patients are often brought into the city from other areas to receive higher levels of care.
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Joss says they convened several emergency meetings with Northern Health to try and figure out a solution, but said what was being pegged as an eight-day disruption was more like 17, because the work of maternity specialists can take place over several days.
“We can’t get women going into labour safely, like inductions and stuff, because those can take a few days to actually bear fruit, so to speak. We can’t start those knowing that there’s a service interruption coming up,” Joss said.
The hospital has about 50 patients due to give birth in August. Joss says moving that many patients at the last minute would be a logistical nightmare.
They had a meeting last Friday where Joss said there were no answers raised — except for doctors, nurses, and midwives being told they’d have to handle the patient load to the best of their abilities, and “hope that nothing horrible happened”.
“It was a really awful place to be put in, particularly because again, this has been going on for months. This is no surprise that this was a potential outcome,” Joss said.
“And then literally at the 11th hour, as we’re about to shut the meeting down with no answers, no practical suggestions, no offers of support from Northern Health or other higher authorities, our head of department for obstetrics stepped in and just took all of the uncovered shifts except for two.”
Joss says that’s an additional six 24-hour shifts for that doctor — and she couldn’t take two of the shifts because she needed to attend her daughter’s wedding.
Other doctors in the unit are covering patients, taking other shifts, and doing whatever they can in addition to running busy family practices, clinics, and taking on their normal workloads.
And while Northern Health sent “a graciously worded thank you” to the doctor who stepped in and posted to Facebook letting patients know coverage had been secured, Joss says the experience has shaken her faith in the health authority.
“My impression is just that there’s a lot of awkward silence. We have a lot of meetings when you know things get suggested and there’s just kind of awkward silence.”
Joss says they’ve been trying to work on a plan to support patients who are transferred elsewhere to receive care through their pregnancies. She says even if they get a free ambulance ride to that community, there are additional costs and stress associated with setting up in a new city or town.
“Can we maybe put together some money? Let’s get a bunch of Airbnbs in different communities and try to relocate families in a practical way, where they’re going to have a kitchen, going to have laundry facilities, in a community that they don’t know, so that they can go and birth their baby,” Joss mentioned as an idea that had been brought up to help families.
She says there were no reasons given as to why that funding may or may not be available — but doctors were told it wasn’t going to happen.
That’s a concern that’s been raised by B.C Conservative MLA and rural health critic Brennan Day.
“The cost now for British Columbians to access care in British Columbia is over $3,000, when they have any sort of complication if they can’t get service close to where they live,” Day told 1130 NewsRadio last week.
“There’s a national standard of care for obstetrics. It means timely, women-centered, safe care that respects diverse needs. No mother in Northern Health would choose this chaos. B.C. needs to do better.”
Northern Health and the Ministry of Health did not answer questions from 1130 NewsRadio about the level of support that would be made available for families transferred to other facilities.
The Ministry of Health declined to answer any questions at all, referring inquiries to Northern Health.
The health authority directed 1130 NewsRadio to a public statement posted on Facebook informing patients that on-call coverage has been secured for the next two months.
Joss says this kind of thing weighs on families going through stressful times in their pregnancy journey, although she took issue with what she said was an overemphasis by the health authority on “high-risk” patients.
“A so-called ‘low-risk patient’ becomes high risk literally within seconds. There’s just so many things you can’t account for,” she said.
“Even if you’ve had a baby before and you’ve successfully birthed, if your second baby happens to be bigger than the first one, it may not fit [through your pelvis]. So what seems to be a low-risk pregnancy — literally, you don’t know until you’re there that it turns into, all of a sudden, a high-risk situation.”
In the meantime, doctors are as anxious about their patients as the expecting families themselves.
Joss calls the ordeal of trying to sort all this out “soul-destroying”.
“This has been just absolutely brutal. You develop a relationship with your patients through prenatal care with women that we see that come in with concerns through labour and delivery,” she said.
“And the idea of having to kind of ship all of them out is awful. You put all this work in, you have these relationships, and then you have to basically say, ‘Good luck. See you later.’”
