SIOUX LOOKOUT, Ont. - Doctors across the northwest are warning of dire consequences due to nurse shortages in First Nation communities.
A letter signed by 47 physicians across Northwestern Ontario to the Minister of Indigenous Services Canada is urging the federal government to increase funding for nursing, support staff, and housing.
“Even pre-COVID, nursing resources in remote First Nations communities were woefully inadequate to meet the health care needs of the population,” reads a statement released by physicians in Sioux Lookout.
“This group of physicians from Sioux Lookout, Ontario, has been advocating for increased nursing, support staff, and infrastructure since before the pandemic. However COVID has brought the issue to a new crisis level.”
Physicians have seen mental health emergencies increasing due to community isolation and nursing stations that were never designed to be 24-hour emergency care rooms have been serving as such.
“Yet staffing numbers remain stagnant at pre-pandemic levels,” the statement reads. “What is more, these few nurses soon will help to shoulder the burden of the largest vaccination campaign in Canada’s history.”
There is also a need for more administrative staff, infrastructure, and housing to support the additional nurses that are needed.
“The pandemic context adds an additional challenge, as most healthcare workers are obliged to share accommodations, thus eliminating their ability to properly self-isolate when traveling from “red zones” and putting these front-line workers and the communities they serve at unacceptable risk,” the statement reads. “Indigenous Services Canada’s neglect of such chronic issues has created an evolving crisis on the ground.”
There have been supports put in place, including the process of Health Transformation by Indigenous Services Canada and with Nishnawbe Aski Nation, will implement needed changes to the health care system in the north.
The Sioux Lookout First Nation Health Authority is also providing leadership and health resources planning.
“However, in parallel with this longer-term process, funding for more nurses, along with the necessary community-based administrative staff and housing infrastructure to support their work, must be provided to meet the urgent and immediate needs of these communities now,” the statement reads. “The time to end substandard care to Indigenous communities is now.”
