Sign up for the paNOW newsletter

Local nursing students ask for improved transit system & address needle concerns

Nov 17, 2015 | 5:46 AM

A group of students from the University of Saskatchewan Nursing Program in Prince Albert are looking to revive the discussion on some of the city’s most prominent issues.

As part of an assignment, the fourth year students were asked to raise issues concerning the city’s health to the city’s elected officials.

On Monday night’s executive committee meeting, the students presented on two issues: the city’s transit system and the city’s needle exchange program.

After conducting 44 informal surveys, the students found that 80 per cent of those surveyed had a desire for extended transit hours in the evening and weekends.

Currently, public transit hours of service is 6:45 a.m. to 7:15 p.m. from Monday to Friday and 9:45 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. on Saturday with no services on Sundays.

“As nurses, as a lot of our patients, we’ve had to personally organize rides to places,” student Ashley Martin said. “As nurses you see it. Transportation really affects people and those who are lucky enough to have cars don’t really get the full severity of the situation.”

Noting that many of the transit users are living in “low socioeconomic income bracket” and do not own personal vehicles, student Ashley Swan-Gareau said the current hours are not suitable for most users.

“Transit users expressed that due to the bus being frequently late and with limited hours, they were either late for jobs or had to leave work in order to avoid having to walk home,” Swan-Gareau presented. “Transit users also said they were unable to carry a second job due to the lack of evening hours.”

According to the students, there are currently 149 bus stops in the city with only 24 of them having shelters, 17 with benches, with some having no sidewalk at all.

“We’d want to see extended hours, but then we’d like just to see the safety increase for our users. You get to your bus stop and there’s no bench, there’s no shelter and there’s no sidewalk, so where do you stand?” Swan-Gareau said.

In addition to the suggestion of extending the hours, the students are also suggesting the city implement a Dial-a-Bus system which would provide an “as needed” transit service.

The service still operates along existing routes, however, the program would allow riders to better schedule their rides.

Needle Exchange

A separate group of nursing students also spoke during the executive committee meeting on Monday evening on the city’s needle problem.

The students primarily focused on the “Straight to the Point Harm Reduction” needle exchange program, hoping to bring more awareness of the program to the city.

“If there’s a problem within the community, you have to continually bring it up until it gets addressed,” said Steven Frazer. “Change mostly comes from elected officials and our leaders in our community, so they’re going to be where it stems from and they provide direction,” he explained.

According to the students, the needle exchange program had a 95 per cent exchange and recovery rate in needles.

However, Mayor Greg Dionne disputed that number.

“This 95 per cent is not a true figure,” he said. “I walked and cleaned a bush area just on the west hill and we picked two five-gallon pails. We returned that to the health region and they count that in the 95 per cent of needles returned … It’s not. It’s Greg Dionne and a couple of friends going out and combing the tree area and returning those needles.

“There’s no argument that the harm reduction works, the complaint we get about the needle exchange program in our community is the tens of thousands of needles that are left in our parks and in our tree areas in our community,” said Dionne.

The councillors also suggested the nursing students give a presentation to the health region, however, Deborah McKay said it is important that the city officials are the ones to get involved in the program.

“We wanted them to tour the facility and become educated,” Deborah McKay said after the meeting. “By gaining the public support of the elected leaders, we’ll in turn change policy and procedure which may implement different services,” she said.

One of those services includes the possibly of a safe injection site in the city which would allow people to use under the supervision of a healthcare worker.

“If we can get political support regarding the needle exchange program, the next step would be to implement a safe injection site in Prince Albert,” said Nastassia Anderson.

Currently, Canada has only one safe injection site which is located in Vancouver.

 

knguyen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @khangvnguyen