On the day Cabin Radio’s five-part series on healthcare in Fort Resolution concluded, an MLA at the series’ centre took a key issue from the reporting to the legislature.
Tu Nedhé-Wiilideh MLA Richard Edjericon was fined and reprimanded for his campaign to oust Fort Resolution nurse-in-charge Jennifer Patterson from that role.
Investigators said that campaign involved Edjericon falsely portraying letters he had written as coming from other leaders. A labour arbitrator said the MLA had unduly influenced the investigation’s list of witnesses.
Read the series:
1. Existing tensions in Fort Resolution
2. The impact of news coverage
3. The investigation’s findings
4. A labour arbitrator’s view
5. Two possible changes ahead
As the legislature’s fall sitting began on Thursday, Edjericon did not mention his role in the case but did highlight another central feature from it: community concern about transportation to the health centre.
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An ongoing source of conflict in Fort Resolution – and other communities – has been a policy preventing nurses from leaving the health centre to attend emergencies at residents’ homes.
The policy is in place for safety reasons. However, it has the effect of requiring that nurses turn down residents who beg them to come and help when a medical crisis hits. That has left some nurses bearing the brunt of residents’ dismay as the face of the broader policy.
For years, community leaders have asked the territorial government to help solve this problem by introducing some form of ambulance service. Each time, the GNWT has said it already gives communities money to be spent on this and, if communities choose not to set up the service, that’s not the GNWT’s fault.
However, this week the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs told Cabin Radio it is working on a “pre-facility transport” program that would introduce some form of transportation to get patients in small communities to their health centre.
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In the legislature, Edjericon said “time spent reaching the health centre can be the difference between life and death” – and an ambulance is a service taken for granted in Yellowknife but rarely available elsewhere in the North.
“Living in small communities shouldn’t mean accepting unequal access to essential services. Community leaders and front-line workers are ready to save lives by building these services together with their partners in the territorial government,” Edjericon said.
Asked by Edjericon if Fort Resolution and nearby Łútsël K’é can expect a plan for paramedic service to be rolled out, communities minister Vince McKay said his government would “work with the communities on what’s needed.”
He said his department and the Department of Health and Social Services are “working together to come up with plans for the communities.”
“Fort Resolution is one of the communities in our minds when we’re talking about this,” McKay said.
No published timeline exists for any new program to roll out.
If it won’t happen any time soon, Edjericon asked, will the GNWT help introduce a volunteer program in the interim?
“Like any small community, volunteerism is very important and I would hope that members of the community will step up,” the minister responded.
He said his department was hoping to offer more supports in small communities in “the near future,” starting with “some established training in the communities, even the simplest thing of basic first aid.”
