Fourth doctor to leave P.E.I.

One other household physician has hung up their stethoscope on Prince Edward Island.

Physician shortages proceed to plague the area, and it could worsen earlier than it will get higher.

Charlottetown has misplaced 4 household medical doctors inside a month.

The latest despatched a letter to sufferers late final week telling them his observe was closing and there wasn’t one more physician to take them on.

There simply aren’t the household medical doctors to exchange him.

“It’s not like they moved to different provinces to do household medication. They’re leaving medication, or they’re leaving household observe and doing one other sort of drugs,” mentioned Dr. Michael Gardam, CEO of Well being PEI.

“To me, that’s actually clear indication that household medication as a specialty is in actual hassle.”

All 4 of the medical doctors leaving Charlottetown have been household physicians.

It’s not clear what number of extra may go, says Gardam.

“We’ve different medical doctors who’re near retirement, we hear that different medical doctors should not completely satisfied being household medical doctors,” mentioned Gardam. “I feel it’s cheap to imagine that this isn’t the tip.”

He says the province is engaged on long-term options, altering the way in which household medication is practiced on P.E.I., however that gained’t be capable to remedy the issue within the brief time period.

Within the meantime, it’s anticipated extra folks shall be added to the province’s household physician waitlist, which already has about 24,000 names.

That may have domino results.

“Loads of these folks don’t have anyplace else to go, so they’re coming into the emergency system, whereas it could not essentially be an emergency, however they haven’t any different place to go,” mentioned Barbara Brookins, president of the P.E.I. Nurses Union.

“We don’t have sufficient walk-in clinics. We don’t have sufficient different alternate methods for them to entry the well being system.”

Brookins says that’s dangerous for sufferers and onerous on all the opposite health-care staff members who step as much as cowl these folks’s care.

“No person actually will get to know them properly, as a result of they’re going from one care supplier to a different,” mentioned Brookins.

“After which once you’re coming into the pressing care system and having to be seen for one thing, that may very well be comparatively minor, however with no different place to go. Then it impacts the wait instances of everybody else.”

The extra medical doctors who go away, the extra pressure is left on those that keep behind — inflicting extra burnout.