Tag Archives: BC Children's Hospital

Health

BC’s Rural Emergency Room Crisis

An alarming trend to watch.

Editor’s note: During a protest over closures at North Island ERs, Adriane Gear VP of the BC Nurses Union told CHEK NEWS, “Our nurses are very worried. The Campbell River Hospital, I understand at any given time could be at 140%, 145% capacity, and at the same time there’s maybe only 60% to 70% of the nurses that would be normally scheduled to work.”  

By Michelle Gamage, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The province’s emergency rooms are in crisis.

ERs across the Lower Mainland have made the news for being at capacity and past their breaking points. This overcrowding led to the death of an infant in 2020 and a senior in 2022.

Doctors have even been urging people to stay away and seek help elsewhere. In the Lower Mainland one in 10 patients are leaving ERs without seeing a doctor, according to reporting by CTV. 

Continue reading BC’s Rural Emergency Room Crisis →
Health, Politics

Why a Top BC Heart Surgeon Quit for Politics

By Moira Wyton, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Dr. Sanjiv Gandhi was more frustrated than usual. The pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon and former chief of cardiac surgery at BC  Children’s Hospital had just spent a shift in the midst of an  unrelenting respiratory illness season. In between caring for his most  urgent patients, he’d had to inform some parents their children’s  non-emergency surgeries were being postponed yet again.

Before driving home that  night of Nov. 14, Gandhi fired off a tweet to his few dozen followers at  the time, calling for mask-wearing as a “mandatory inconvenience”  during such a crisis. 

The tweet blew up,  gathering more than 11,500 likes to date. It also added to the ire from  Gandhi’s employer, the Provincial Health Services Authority, for his  comments to media outside the official channels. 

Continue reading Why a Top BC Heart Surgeon Quit for Politics →
Health

BC Greens Launch Hearings on Health-Care ‘Crisis’

By Moira Wyton, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The BC Green Party says urgent action is needed to address the province’s “collapsing” health-care system.

And its two MLAs are  planning a series of meetings across the province this summer to hear  from health-care workers and patients on solutions.

Continue reading BC Greens Launch Hearings on Health-Care ‘Crisis’ →