By Angela Hill

West Flat to lose nurse practitioner services

Nov 23, 2011 | 5:31 AM

There are changes coming to the Bernice Sayese Community Centre in Prince Albert’s West Flat area.

Beginning in April, the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region clinic located there will no longer offer nurse practitioner services.

“It’s a great loss for the community,” said Dawn Robins, executive director for the Centre and the West Flat Community Group.

The region is pulling the practitioner out because there aren’t enough people using the services, said Lynnda Berg, vice-president primary and community care, with the region.

“We’ve tried to do all kinds of marketing, we’ve tried to go to schools and whatever, to try and get our numbers up, but we still cannot … our average is four patients a day there,” she said.
“There are still (other) services there, but we’re just taking out that one component because it’s just so underutilized.”

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The other services include immunization, dental health, a lactation consultant and homecare.

There was a study done that said people weren’t going to the nurse practitioner because there are doctors elsewhere in the city taking new clients, Berg said.

The same study said people prefer going to clinics close to pharmacy and laboratory locations also.

“We recognize the fact that we don’t pharmacy there and we don’t have the capability to do those sorts of things (and) that is an issue, I mean we hear that in the rural sites too,” she said.

Robins said she thinks it has more to do with people not understanding what services a nurse practitioner can provide.

“It’s the community that doesn’t understand the nurse practitioner,” she said.
“We did go out and publicize for them, but I think they needed to do a lot more.”

Over time, more people had begun to start attending the clinic and the kids from Ranch Ehrlo and Eagle’s Nest Youth Ranch are being taken to the centre as well, Robins said.

Clinic hours made it difficult for people to attend because the nurse practitioner didn’t offer services after 4 p.m., Robins said.

“A lot of times people get home from work and kids get home from school and that’s when people know they need to get to the doctor or nurse practitioner,” she said.
“I think it probably would have raised the numbers.”

Berg calls concerns about the hours of services, “fair criticism,” and said they didn’t try different hours.

“We really need to put resources into Shellbrook, so we view that as higher need because there is lots of access in the city,” she said.

The nurse practitioner position from the Bernice Sayese Community Centre will be relocated to Shellbrook in April.

ahill@panow.com