A Calgary doctor now wears a ribbon he made from duct tape to represent how Alberta’s health care system is barely being held together.
After he heard that hospitals in Red Deer and Calgary were using plastic sheeting or tarps held up with duct tape to create spaces for patients, Dr. David Keegan said he realized that work-arounds are what Alberta’s health care system has been reduced to.
“This is where we are. We’re metaphorically holding things together with duct tape,” said Keegan, a family doctor and a professor of family medicine at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary.
“None of that should be happening, but that is what’s happening so let’s not hide it anymore.”
While he applauded the health care team in Red Deer’s emergency department for doing what they could to provide a little more privacy to patients, he said it’s sad that they had to try and make a such a horrible situation better.
Alberta Health Services has said that due to the respiratory illness season, Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre’s emergency department was seeing high patient volumes, which was not unusual at this time of year. Temporary dividers were erected and more permanent dividers were on order.
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Keegan was sorry that people who depend on Red Deer’s hospital have been left to languish for years when it was obvious that more beds were needed.
Patients been known to face long waits times for treatment in the emergency department while inpatients in the department waited for beds elsewhere in the hospital.
“I’m sure the emergency doctors are dealing with patients who have nowhere else to turn. We shouldn’t be in a situation like that.”
He said things are just getting worse with the shortage of family doctors, the repercussions of the pandemic and ongoing spread of respiratory viruses, delayed surgeries, and referral systems that are clogged and jammed with people who need care.
He said staff have been making do as best they can to help patients, but it’s a massively overrun health care system. Meanwhile, the provincial government is focused on cutting Alberta Health Care into pieces, creating more questions than answers.
“You can’t have that organizational change without a lot of time, money, resources and distraction and chaos. They’re choosing that in a time of crisis. They’re basically choosing duct tape.”
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Keegan said he’s had patients who were frustrated and scared about medical delays they encounter, but on Thursday he saw two patients so worried about the challenges in the health care system that they were in a panic, and he expects there will be more.
He hopes the duct tape ribbon campaign will catch on and that Albertans will use pieces of duct tape to create their own ribbons to make it clear what’s happening to the health care system.
“If somebody asks I’ll say I’m wearing a duct tape ribbon to just show my support for a great health care system for everybody,” said Keegan who wears his homemade duct tape ribbon on his ID lanyard.
szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com
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