Health care condition critical: How did we get here?

John De Boer is lucky to have a family doctor, but he isn't fortunate enough to get the surgery he needs.

The 73-year-old has been waiting to have knee replacement surgery since March of 2021.

"I mean, it's not something you can do without," said De Boer on his way to a doctor's appointment. "You gotta walk and the knee is sore, but my doctor just tells me there's no operation time scheduled. He can't get any OR (operating room) time."

De Boer said his wife recently had to deal with a long trip to the emergency room.

"It's kind of scary when you think about it. My wife was at outpatient one time. She had a pain in her chest. She was out there for about six hours. She hadn't even seen the triage nurse," said De Boer.

With staffing shortages, bed shortages, and hundreds of thousands of Maritimers without a family physician — health care in the region has likely never been in such a critical condition.

But how did things get this bad? How did we get to where we are now?

Dr Leisha Hawker, president of Doctors Nova Scotia, said it's been a long time coming due to the ageing population in the Maritimes.

"We also have an ageing healthcare workforce. We have many physicians who have worked five, ten years past the date they probably would have preferred to retire and many have retired over the last few years and many more are to retire over the next couple of years as well,” said Hawker.

“So, it could potentially get worse before it gets better unless we do some significant recruitment and retention for the Maritime provinces.”

Like many Maritime emergency departments, the ER at Sackville Memorial Hospital in New Brunswick has closed temporarily due to a lack of staff a handful of times this summer and it isn't even open after 4 p.m.

Green Party MLA Megan Mitton said the closures have had a big impact on the community.

"It affects people's health obviously when they can't have quick access to the emergency room here. It also affects people's mental health because there's not the peace of mind that the hospital is open when they're going to need it," said Mitton.

Horizon Health recently hired five new nurses for the Sackville Memorial Hospital. Mitton says that's good news, but she doesn't think it's enough for what's needed there and she wants to see more done for physician recruitment and retention.

Hawker said there aren't enough health care professionals trained to meet the need of the region, so recruitment is crucial.

"We need to look at ways to make recruitment easier," said Hawker. "Recruiting from outside the country and trying to make Nova Scotia as attractive of a province, not only for the physician but also for the whole family so they'll come and then they'll stay long-term."