Help to save Paediatric Intensive Care at Vic General
Steve Pridgeon
be at a Hospital Board meeting at Begbie Hall, Royal Jubilee Hospital, at
7:00 pm on Wednesday, April 5. All parents and interested members of the
public are urged to come to show support for the preservation of the
Unit. It is hoped that attendance will be in the hundreds.
The Board has refused to hear the staff on the issue at this meeting,
saying there is no room on the agenda. Application can be made for a
meeting six weeks down the road, by which time it will probably be too
late to have any effect. The staff has therefore decided to go ahead
anyway and attend on Wednesday in order to demonstrate to the Board the
level of concern that exists for the maintenance of this service.
For those who do not know the background to this, Tom Closson announced
the closure of the Unit late last week, as part of a cost-saving package,
citing low utilisation. However, the statistics with which he was
provided were grossly inaccurate, and appeared to have been derived by
dividing the occupancy rates of the two beds used for the most critically
ill children by the five beds in the unit as a whole. The true occupancy
rate is not the 23% cited, but close to 60%, comparable to the national
average for other PICUs. No-one consulted any member of the PICU staff,
nor its director, on this decision. Furthermore, Closson failed to note
the fact that the staff work in other areas when the unit is not busy, as
well as omitting to mention that the cost of caring for these patients
will be no less if they are transferred to Vancouver, plus the high costs
of helicopter transport. Worse, Vancouver PICU is already overflowing,
and has stated that at least some of our children will end up in Calgary
or further afield if we close the Unit.
We are currently fortunate to have an excellent team of highly trained
medical and nursing staff on hand to care for our critically sick
children. If the Unit closes, this team will quickly disperse. It may
take years to rebuild a comparable body of expertise. In the meantime,
not only will children be subjected to the additional risk and trauma of
long-distance travel to other hospitals, but many surgeries and other
procedures will have to take place in other centres due to the lack of
Intensive Care back-up.
Please attend this meeting to show the Board that you are not willing to
allow this closure to take place.
Ms. Qué
Thanks for posting this. I'll pass the info on and will be there. I've
spent quite some time in this unit when I was a child and believe it is
important that the unit remains.
~ Qué
--
~*~ "I forget what I was taught. I only remember what I have learnt." -
Patrick White ~*~
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Steve Pridgeon
A reminder - it looks like it's going to be a big turnout!
Wear a green ribbon to support the cause.