BOYLE – After nearly half a year of night closures at the Boyle Healthcare Centre, a solution to the lack of registered nurses appears no closer to being found, and Boyle’s mayor is growing more and more frustrated by the day.
Village of Boyle mayor Colin Derko expressed that frustration as he delivered his committee report to councillors during the Nov. 2 regular council meeting, most of which was filled with one meeting or another regarding the local healthcare facility, which has ceased 24-hour operations since July, closing at 8 p.m. every night and opening again at 9 a.m.
“All of the people I’ve met so far with AHS and all the leaders in this area are very pro-Boyle hospital but I just feel like we need to start looking at the big picture and stop trying to plug the hole with bubble gum and just get it fixed,” Derko told fellow councillors, noting temporary solutions are no longer sufficient and it’s time to open the facility back up for 24 hours per day.
It’s getting harder and harder to accept the same response every month, he added.
“It feels like we’re just wasting our time and energy when we could be focusing on fixing the big problem.”
That big problem is attracting and retaining registered nurses to the community, and Boyle is far from the only community in Alberta facing that challenge, and while ads have been out for months, the struggle search continues. Registered nurses are qualified to supervise operations in a hospital, and there must always be at least one on shift in a facility the size of Boyle’s.
One of those meetings at the end of October brought together 30 northeast mayors, reeves, and Indigenous leaders in Lac La Biche to discuss regional issues. A sub-committee, now chaired by Derko was formed to focus specifically on the Boyle Healthcare Centre, which serves not only Boyle and the eastern portion of Athabasca County, but parts of Lac La Biche, Smoky Lake and Thorhild counties as well.
Derko said he appreciates the chatter about healthcare in Boyle specifically, and the northeast region in general, but it doesn’t appear the right people are listening.
Athabasca County reeve Brian Hall and deputy reeve Ashtin Anderson also attended that meeting, along with Athabasca mayor Rob Balay, who also reported on the many other healthcare meetings he has attended recently to councillors at Athabasca town council’s Nov. 1 meeting.
Balay said he sees great value in the regional effort and looks forward to bringing health care concerns regarding the Boyle hospital, nurses, nurse practitioners and doctor shortages throughout the northeast region.
“This committee will identify priorities and propose some solutions that we can put forward to the government that can address and help tackle these problems,” Balay said in his report of the new sub-committee. “At our next NE zone meeting scheduled in January, we will invite the appropriate ministers, deputy ministers and MLAs for the NE regions and present these priorities and have hopefully meaningful discussions.”
