Daughter of N.S. man in urgent need of cancer treatment calls out government on health-care crisis

The daughter of a Nova Scotia man in urgent need of cancer treatment is calling out the provincial government, which she says is failing to address to the health-care crisis.

Pam Shears' 67-year-old father, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, is currently at the hospital in Yarmouth, N.S.

She says when her father needed medical help July 3, the emergency department in his hometown of Digby, N.S., was closed.

He was then taken by ambulance to Yarmouth Regional Hospital, where he has been waiting for a bed in Halifax since Wednesday.

"My dad is deteriorating quite significantly and as of now, when he wakes up, his first question is, 'When am I going to Halifax?' And it's not fair to family members, it's not fair to patients and it's certainly not fair to the nurses and doctors to be unable to answer those question appropriately, because they have not been given the resources from our government to help them," said Shears.

Shears says her father needs to get to Halifax for specialized chemo treatment.

"There's a new chemotherapy, which will be administered to him in Halifax, and that's the treatment that he needs," she says.

Shears says, even when a bed becomes available, she wonders how long it will take to get her father to Halifax.

"When the bed comes available, we're in Yarmouth. So, the question then will be, how long will we wait for an EHS to transfer him to the city?" she asks.

Shears says, she hopes the next time her father wakes up and asks when he'll be taken to Halifax, that a government official has an answer waiting for him.

"It doesn't matter who you are in this world, one day, you're going to need health care. There's tons of ways to spend money but everyone will access health care at some point. It doesn't matter who you are, what lifestyle you lived, it doesn't matter what income you're at, but the problem also is, depending on where you live in this province is going to depend on what type of health care you can access."

Shears just hopes her father is able to get the treatment he requires in time.

"I know that if my dad was to get a bed, that's what I want, that there's probably someone else's dad who's not going to get a bed and if my dad doesn't make it, it's going to be horrible and it's going to be what it is," she says. "But I want for everyone to sit back and realize that it's very easy to say that our health-care system is bad, but you need to realize that your status of what you require from the health system can change in a second."

Shears' father has been sick on-and-off for about five years.

"He gets better and then he declines," she explains. "The problem of recent, it has been a very quick decline, but also, due to hospital closures and other factors with limited resources, he's in the position that he's in right now." 

Shears says the government needs to put a proper plan in place to avoid these types of issues.

"I want to see a bed, but I don't want to see a bed just for my dad," she says. "I want to see a proper plan put in place so anyone who requires a bed will have a bed when the time comes.”

Shears adds the nurses, doctors and other hospital staff she and her father have dealt with have done everything they can to help. But says she wants to highlight the crisis in health care for all other rural Nova Scotians facing limited access to care they need.

"This has got nothing to do with the nurses, the doctors, the cleaners at the hospitals, the clerks, they are all being worked to their max," she says. "They are burned out for so many reasons, and the government, to say that they're going to fix health care, well you can come to the hospital and you can start picking up some shifts."

Nova Scotia has been dealing with a health-care crisis made worse by staffing shortages and COVID-19-related disturbances.

Hospital and emergency departments have been forced to temporarily close on several occasions due to a lack of staff to cover shifts because of positive COVID-19 cases.

Ambulance delays have also been at the centre of discussions, with some people waiting hours.

The province's nurses have been demanding action to address chronic staffing shortages that they say have been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As of last week, the Nova Scotia Nurses' Union says there were about 1,400 vacancies for registered nurses, and 250 spots open for licensed practical nurses.

Nova Scotia's Progressive Conservative government made an election campaign pledge to spend heavily on the province's ailing health system. The $13.2-billion budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year, tabled in March, contains $5.7 billion for health care -- an increase of $413.4 million compared to last year's spending. But Premier Tim Houston has warned residents not to expect rapid change.