By Angela Hill

Community consultations reach consensus

Sep 22, 2011 | 11:30 AM

Workshops held in Big River and Spiritwood brought people together to discuss the expansion of health care in their communities.

“I mean the big issues we were speaking to, how to provide some after-hours care and primary care to the communities so that they have some access outside of what we call banking hours,” said Lynnda Berg, vice president of primary and community care for the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region.

In this year’s budget, the region put money into expanding primary care services in these two communities.

There were 20 people at the Big River workshop, while about 30 attended the meetings in Spiritwood, said Berg. Most of the attendees were people from the rural municipalities, First Nations, town councils and concerned citizen groups.

“I felt like it was the first time we all sat in a room with the intention to participate rather than the intention to dictate, so that was really good,” said Tracy Shira-Parker, chair of the Northern Lakes Health Committee about the Spiritwood meeting.

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“It was a consensus with the people that this was a step forward,” said Doug Panter, reeve of the Rural Municipality of Big River.

“The mood there was fairly positive as far as I was concerned.”

While there was lots of discussion about the expansion of hours and the possibility of additional nurse practitioners, there are no announcements about the future yet, he said.

“You don’t want to go raise people’s expectations and then go and pull the rug out from underneath them,” Panter said.

One of the concerns continues to be recruitment, said Brian Brownfield, the mayor of Big River.

“They say that the problem still exists, where do we find the staff? Where do we find the nurse practitioners? Where do we find the people to do these extra hours?” he asked.

“You can come up with all the ideas, but you still need to find the people to fill the positions and that’s the most difficult part of it … we’ve got to find the people.”

The health region knows that it’s not easy to recruit nurse practitioners and even if there is funding set aside, it doesn’t mean they’ll find someone, Berg said.

There are some local people training, but they are not close to graduating yet.

The report from the two meetings is set to go before the health region board during their October meeting.

ahill@panow.com