Three Charlottetown-area doctors resign, leaving thousands of Islanders without a physician
The Charlottetown area is set to lose three family physicians over the next several weeks.
Their departure means approximately 5,400 people will be without a family doctor, on top of the thousands in Prince Edward Island who are already without primary medical care.
Health PEI says patients will be notified directly and will receive information about how to access records and receive care.
It’s not just doctors, hospitals have been struggling to get a full compliment of registered nurses.
The lack of staff means many who have a bed open for them in long-term care are stuck in hospitals because the bed can’t be staffed.
Islanders are also facing extended wait times for ambulances.
In Nova Scotia, the scope of pharmacists has been slowly increasing in order to take stress off that province’s health-care system, and the pharmacy association in P.E.I. says they have a bigger role to play in that province as well.
Pharmacists in P.E.I. are already allowed to offer medicine to treat minor conditions without direction from a general practitioner, but not all of those consultations are covered under provincial health insurance, so have to be paid out of pocket.
Losing doctors has spin off effects. Those patients who are now without a family doctor will have to rely on already stressed walk-in clinics, pushing even more people into packed ERs for primary care.
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