• Users Online: 594
  • Print this page
  • Email this page


 
 
Table of Contents
EDITORIAL/ÉDITORIAL
Year : 2023  |  Volume : 28  |  Issue : 1  |  Page : 5

President's Message – Rural emergency room closures


President, SRPC, Petitcodiac, NB, Canada

Date of Submission19-Oct-2022
Date of Decision03-Nov-2022
Date of Acceptance04-Nov-2022
Date of Web Publication02-Jan-2023

Correspondence Address:
MD, FCFP Sarah Lesperance
President, SRPC, Petitcodiac, NB
Canada
Login to access the Email id

Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None


DOI: 10.4103/cjrm.cjrm_81_22

Rights and Permissions

How to cite this article:
Lesperance S. President's Message – Rural emergency room closures. Can J Rural Med 2023;28:5

How to cite this URL:
Lesperance S. President's Message – Rural emergency room closures. Can J Rural Med [serial online] 2023 [cited 2023 May 31];28:5. Available from: https://www.cjrm.ca/text.asp?2023/28/1/5/366271



A system in crisis. We are all feeling the heavy burden of increased workloads, lack of nursing and physician staff to provide clinical care, and higher volumes of patients seeking care in emergency departments. The relief we all hoped to feel, as case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths from COVID-19 decreased, has eluded us. We feel the moral injury of the late presentations and preventable illnesses, knowing that, despite our best efforts to provide care in this crumbling system, we have not been able to live up to the standards of our training.

It is an incredibly challenging time to work in healthcare, and the pressures felt in urban areas are only amplified for those of us working in the rural communities. In many regions, rural teams have had to face the difficult decision to close or limit services. While we all understand the importance of setting boundaries and a need to have some time off to be able to sustain work long term, it is harder to put into action. There is always a sense of guilt in seeing your patients at the grocery store, your child's sports practice, while spending time exercising or out to dinner with friends, knowing the emergency room is closed for the night. However, we are not the ones to blame for this.

All too often physician wellness initiatives have focused on having physicians come to terms with setting boundaries and augmenting their self-care or mindfulness strategies. However, these actions are far from sufficient to sustain our rural healthcare systems. We must demand more from our mayors, MPPs/MLAs and Federal government; rural Canada deserves better. We must also engage our patients in conversations around appropriate use of system resources, preventative care, injury prevention and ongoing strategies to reduce the transmission of illness. As part of our efforts to engage patients and governments in these critical conversations, the SRPC has launched an initiative regarding Emergency Department closures: https://srpc.ca/HHR_resource.

We know there is a crisis, but does everyone else? It's time we ensure they do, as this is not our burden to carry alone.






 

Top
 
  Search
 
    Similar in PUBMED
   Search Pubmed for
   Search in Google Scholar for
    Access Statistics
    Email Alert *
    Add to My List *
* Registration required (free)  

 
  In this article

 Article Access Statistics
    Viewed557    
    Printed48    
    Emailed0    
    PDF Downloaded70    
    Comments [Add]    

Recommend this journal