Galiano and Mayne Island residents who say the absence of weekend on-call nurses is unsafe and will force more medical evacuations presented a petition in the legislature Wednesday.
Gulf Island health-care representatives were in Victoria to hand over petitions with about 1,300 signatures combined.
“Island Health has removed what I would call an essential service that was very cost-effective and the removal can only result in higher-cost medical evacuations that might not be necessary if the person could be dealt with by a on-site call nurse,” said Michael Hoebel, president of the Galiano Health Care Society.
Health-care groups are asking the province and Island Health for reinstatement of so-called First Call Nurse positions.
For years, nurses provided on-call coverage for health centres on Galiano and Mayne Island for two weekends each month. A doctor is on call for the third weekend and one weekend a month goes uncovered.
On the weekends with no nurse coverage, Gulf Islanders rely on a designated remote on-call doctor who can be paged. In the case of a critical emergency, the patient is taken to a major hospital, often in Victoria.
Island Health eliminated the on-call nurse positions in November and bolstered the hours of home and community care nurse positions in the Gulf Islands.
“Although we had long advocated for this, at no time did Island Health suggest that an increase in this area would mean the loss of the First Call Nurses,” said the health-care groups in a statement accompanying the petition.
Island Health said physicians will continue to be on call for residents of Galiano, Mayne and Saturna islands.
“Because there are now three permanent doctors and two nurse practitioners providing primary health care — with the physicians sharing after-hours on-call duties — this created the opportunity last fall to direct some nursing resources to home care services, where they are needed more,” said Island Health spokeswoman Suzanne Germain in an email.
“The after-hours on-call nursing service was not used much, while there is a significant need for more home care services,” Germain said.
Directing resources to increase home care services will better support the growing population of seniors on the islands and make better use of nurses’ time, Germain said. “We expect that enhancing home and community care services on the Islands will help vulnerable residents better maintain their health and will reduce the demand for urgent services for these clients.”
Health groups on Galiano and Mayne islands say they have protested to Island Health and to the Ministry of Health about the nursing cut to no avail. “We cannot understand why Island Health would want to cancel a service that was so important to our island communities and very cost-effective,” Hoebel said.
First responders with the B.C. Ambulance Service and fire department remain in place to respond to medical emergencies, but those protesting the nursing cuts say the first responders’ role is largely to arrange for transport of emergency patients off-island.
“First Call Nurses’ vital role was to assist the ambulance and first responder crews and provide medical care for emergency cases prior to evacuation, and also to deal with a variety of non-emergency but urgent medical needs on the weekends,” says the petition.
