After the short presentation, board members fielded a series of questions from the public, medical professionals and nurses.
On June 19, the Fraser Health board of directors heard directly from the front lines about the current health care crisis.
The emergency department at Abbotsford Regional Hospital and Cancer Centre is seeing more patients, but nurses are being stretched thin to keep up with them. “Patients are going home crying, suffering mentally, physically and emotionally. Nurses are working themselves to the bone,” said a nurse who asked not to be identified.
And while the B.C. government is promising billions of dollars to build new hospitals, who will staff them? The nurse asked.
“And we're drowning.”
The Fraser Health board holds regular public meetings, with the most recent meeting held in Abbotsford.
After the short presentation, board members fielded a series of questions from the public, medical professionals and nurses.
When asked by The Optimist about the possibility of an urgent primary care centre at Delta Hospital, Natalie McCarthy, vice president of regional care integration, said, “There are many more urgent and primary care centres planned for construction in the region, and areas that don't currently have urgent primary care are of course being looked at to provide those services.”
McCarthy added that UPCCs have begun to expand their hours of operation, and one of the challenges is that while more UPCCs are opening, footfall is increasing.
B.C.'s population grew by 28,743 people in the last three months of 2023, according to Statistics BC.
Board chairman Jim Sinclair said Fraser Health, as a health authority, has no plans to work with the federal government to address population growth.
“Our job is to make sure that people who come here can find a place to get medical care, and that's certainly a challenge for us,” Sinclair said.
