Alex's Blog Post

Why is Winnipeg Health Care Failing it’s People?

                Winnipeg health care system is failing us because we don’t have enough hospitals to support the 783, 700 people who live here. We only have six hospitals and probably one 3-4 doctors on call, depending on the ward. 280,000 people visited the hospital last year which calculates 23, 333 visits each month and 5833 people a week. Thus equally out to 972 people in each hospital. The average ambulance wait in 2013 was 78 minutes. According to the WRHA president and CEO Arlene Wilgosh, the WRHA wants to be able to treat and discharge 90% of emergency rooms patients. Myrightcare.cu is a website promoting other alternatives to patients to use, rather than rushing to emergency rooms for less severe incidents or concerns.  In my opinion, this won’t really help because when people are really sick they don’t want to go online.  They want to know what is wrong and the place to go is the hospital where doctors and nurses are to help. Also people will be a little hesitant to use to website because people don’t trust the internet for certain research and also people won’t be thinking clear because they are too busy panicking.

                My mom Sylvia Ptashnik, is the director of residence and services at Deer Lodge Centre,  one of the board of directors for the Fred Douglas committee, and has also been a nurse for 37 years. She worked in emergency rooms and the intensive care unit for 25 years. I asked her, “Why is the health care system failing us?” She answered, “When I worked in the emergency room, ambulance waiting times were a lot faster than they are now and we didn’t have the amount of people requiring hospital visits as much as we do now.” She also told me, “about 15-30 years ago people were saying we need more hospitals to cover the growing population of Winnipeg, but the government denied saying no we don’t need to build more hospitals. Now they are trying to make up for their mistakes, but it’s a little too late.”

                In my experience with hospital visits they need to improve the care they give the patients because when I had my appendix out the nurses didn’t give me good care. For example, when I wanted clean sheets they told my parents where to find them and my parents changed them. It is their job to do things like that.

                If our money goes into the health care system, why isn’t it changing or improving. We learned in class that it is the provincial government’s responsibility to provide us with health care. In the case study we did on health care on September 18, it states despite the massive funds put into the system, problems still exist. Waiting room times for operations, recruitment of new staff – especially doctors and specialists nursing staff. Arguments continue over where National Health Service funds would be most appropriately spent. This article is on the health care problems that are in the United Kingdom but they are similar to the problems that we have here in Canada. 

WRHA flatlineson ER targets  By: Larry Kusch Winnipeg Free Press

 http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/whra-flatlines-on-er-targets-24034051.html 

The Numbers don't lie: Ambulance wait times rising, not falling By: Tom Brodbeck Winnipeg Sun

http://www.winnipegsun.com/2013/10/15/the-numbers-dont-lie-ambulance-wait-times-rising-not-falling