Dr Java's coffee shop is an overflow for emergencies ?

A few weeks ago a Tim Hortons was used as an overflow for an emergency department down east, so why not Dr. Java's here? Better then laying in Hells Hallway in agony.

cases are seen in order of Priority! she should of went to a walk in clinic (most are open until 10pm and are open again at 8am!)

The same thing happened to me and my wife and young boy. That hospital is a disgrace. I agree on the 24 hour minor emergency. But there would have to be an armed guard to pretect the doctors from the trash that would show up and cause trouble.

I dunno. I mean, the idea's a good one, but what's the difference between waiting for hours in the hospital or doing the same thing in a clinic? The drunks and such will still be there.

Hello SeeClickFixers!

I want to thank you all for the taking the time to report issues on SeeClickFix. It seems like you all are very passionate about this issue; it's generating a lot of dialogue. While discussing the issue itself helps, it might be more constructive to work together and brainstorm some possible solutions. What can be done to resolve this issue?

Keep SeeClickFixing!

The problem I'm seeing is where to put the walk-in clinics. Ideally, there'd be three or four open 24-hours or very late, with one of them being downtown. That last one would need security, for sure, I think. That's not practical, though, is it, having several 24-hour clinics. Not in a city our size, anyway.

While I can appreciate that no one walks the drunks around at all and getting the prisoners in and out in a hurry might be a good idea, that still doesn't cover the waiting problem. There's another problem, though. I'm not saying it's the case here, but some people don't seem to understand that being in pain all day and *then* wanting to see a doctor about it isn't the way to deal with things. I know quite a few people who do that and take up space at the hospital because they can't be arsed to go the bit of a distance during 'prime time' television hours to see a doctor at a clinic.

It's a pity that there's not enough money in the budget to have a 24-hour infirmary in the jails and/or a couple of 'advanced first aid' responders assigned to the police department.

Some people:
She started having the abdominal pain after the minor emerg closed

Simple add another doctor with nurses and beds with all the dollars needed to do this. Only problem money that is not there.

I had to go a whole weekend with a broken ankle wiggling around because I guess broken bones arent as important as someone who drank too much, lysol...this city disgusts me

I just donated all of my Aeroplan miles to the Victoria Hospital Foundation (http://www.helpthevic.ca/events.html#aeroplan) maybe they'll fly us in some more doctors

what they need is a doctor that's there 24/7. i've gone there several times and waited several hours. I'd get upset and i'd go up to the nurse at the triage desk and ask what's going on and she would tell me "we are waiting for an emergency before we call the "on call" doctor in. Why anyone should have to wait for a doctor at a hospital is beyond me.

The city really needs to solve this. one hospital cannot carry the demand of all of northern sask. especially with all the small town closures. why they closed the holy family????who knows......that was a nice hospital......as of shortage of workers....bull........its the lack of funding for these nurses and doctors.......get it together .......doctors and teachers should be paild accordingly......because it is these people who work the hardest and are paid poorly......saskatoon may triple or quadrupal in population but they have 3 hospitals which are all busy all the time.....due to the fact we as a city cannot accomodate the need! council should take note ........we are a centrally located city ...a "gateway to the north" ........lets have the services to support this.....seeing is we are first stop for people in the north!..........a new bridge can wait.....lets get the healthcare we deserve and need! before we worry about heading to the lakes this summer....priority people

We had an accident in Saskatoon with our toddler once and had to take him to St Pauls, the nearest hospital. We were impressed how quickly the triage nurse put us thru, while the disgusting drunks were given lower priority. Perhaps PA should examine the concept of triage in greater detail?

The initial concept of your post is good; there is a definite need for a 24 hr walk in clinic. But then you go completely in a different direction with the "vagrant" and "convict" talk. You have no clue what kind of medical attention was necessary for those PEOPLE. People are all the same in the eyes of healthcare. Sorry to say, but if your girlfriend was in such dire need of medical attention, she would have been seen more quickly. The emergency dept, is for emergencies. People who really need emergency attention, get emergency attention. And if you don't believe me, be present when a Code Blue is called.

I don't know what code blue is nor do I care. When my mother who was in cardiac failure, a condition that the emergency dept was made aware of, sat for 21/2 hpurs in Hells Hallway till she started to turn blue before once more after asking for help, she was given oxygen that kept her going till an hour later she was admitted.
Maybe that is what is meant by code blue?

@hockey11 - I don't believe I went off on a tangent at all actually. My girlfriend would have been seen sooner (which is the original issue here) had we not had to wait for the doctor to see the convict who was clearly there because he had gotten into a fight, and the vagrant who was passed out drunk in the chair right beside me while I held my breath because I couldn't stand the smell of listerine on him. I don't believe I am wrong in believing that as taxpayers we should receive priority and not the individuals abusing the systems which are being funded by the taxpayers dollars.
The emergency dept, is for emergencies, but is it debatable whether individuals getting into a fight or being intoxicated because of issues with addictions and substance abuse are of a higher priority than people with problems they did not get because of poor life decisions.....I think not.

It's my boyfriend that posted this, it was me that was at the hospital for abdominal pains. For those who say I should have went to a walk in clinic, the pains started just after 10pm, so the walk-ins were closed. I could barely move or breathe. We knew what the vagrant and the guy in handcuffs were there for, the cops and nurses weren't talking quietly about it. The man passed out reaking of listerine was there for a place to pass out, so they stuck him in detox. The man in handcuffs with bruises and small cuts was there for fighting, then being taken into custody. After my 3.5 hours in the waiting, I saw the doctor and had tests done, it was an infection in my uterus. The doctor said it was a good thing I came in when I did, because it requires immediate antibiotics and my white blood cell count was 4 times higher than normal, which means major infection. I am 21 years old and plan on having children, he said a day or two longer could have meant permanent damage or scarring, and It could have possibly been bad enough that I would have been able to have children. I'd say thats kind of a dire need of medical attention over someone who made the decision to drink listerine or get in a fight.

That I would NOT have been able to have children*

The hospital is silly. I waited there right next to the triage desk for 4 hours in a wheel chair. Person after person who looked like they were in no pain at all, including a drunk young boy in hand cuffs, were taken in as soon as they checked in and marched right on out not even an hour later. They didnt even have compassion for the woman who came waddling in, clearly in pain and in labour. They even bickered on how she sat in her wheelchair.
After I was taken into ambulatory care, I waited another 2 hours to get an xray, along with another hour to finally see a doctor.
Turns out I tore 5 ligaments in my foot and broke my ankle after slipping on ice and landing on it, which had already been starting to discolor and was the size of a softball.
But sitting there in pain doesn't matter if a drunk needs detox and a bed to sleep in.

@ Dallas Wilm - The problem you have doesn't seem to be with the hospitals ER , it seems to be with the population of our city that could be classified as "less than desirable". Add that to the fact that you attempted to gain sympathy by including your start time of work (which has absolutely no relation to the need of a 24 hour clinic), and this post has all the characteristics of someone who got a little frustrated and felt the need to vent.

Perhaps instead of complaining about a measly six hour wait you could thank the staff for saving your girlfriends ability to procreate? Call me old fashioned but 6 hours doesn't seem that terrible in the big picture...

@Derp- Six hours is a long time to wait when you are in pain for anyone. No one wants to feel pain. I think having a 24hr minor emergency in the City of Prince Albert would be a great thing for alot of people. And lets just say for arugment sake i am assuming you are male....... try passing a kidney stone for 6 hours and let see what you have to say after that!!!!!!!!!!

our hospital system and the valuable and knowledgeable doctors and nurses are being abused and taken advantage of by those that have problems that a hospital can't solve for them. no matter which way you cut it, in the end, their hands are tied by all kinds of rules and laws that prevent them from turning anyone away and they are forced to deal with all kinds of inappropriate so-called 'emergencies' for fear of someone crying discrimination. meanwhile, people with heart attacks, strokes, broken bones and dangerous infections are going to have to suck it up and realize, this stuff comes with the territory in prince albert. literally. it's a sad reality. but i'm not sure who can fix this. government? yeah right. they made this mess in the first place.

@Derp, go sit at the hospital for 6 hours though the night, go to bed for an hour, then go to work. Or lets say you get your testicles infected, your in an abundace of pain and can hardly move. Then have the same senario play out for you, how would you feel? This website is for people to have their say about their problems about things in this city. This website isn't for writing all the things around Prince Albert that make you happy. He had a problem he wants fixed so he posted how he felt. obviously it's a vent, that's what this site is for! I saw another woman at the hospital and like me, she was holding her stomach, crying, could hardly move. Who got in first? The young lady with a cut on her pinkie that required 1 or 2 stitches. I don't believe they are going by who needs medical attention the most.

I think that a 24 hour clinic is desperatley needed. The nurses come here and complain that people use the hospital for such problems as a cold or a flu, well where else are they supposed to go?. Clinics close at 10 which is not helpful for people who do need to see a doctor later at night.

To Derp: why do the "less than desirables" seem to get treated and released quicker than the taxpayers?

Oh well if you have a nusing or medical degree than by all means, we should send them over in your direction.

I've sat in that emergency area with my wife and my daughter on a couple of different occassions and you know what? inmate from PACC or the "Big Pen" gets served and released well ahead of everyone else, even my wife, my daughter. Why? probably cause they have a hang nail of all things.

6 hours is way too long enough for anyone to wait. Dallas probably could of driven his gf to S'toon (maybe if she wasn't in unbearable pain) and been treated. It's just a shame that this issue keeps coming up again and again and the health region can't seem to change things...maybe it's time!

The thing that is missing from this conversation is the definition of an emergency. If someone is healthy enough to sit for 2 or 4 or 6+ hours in the emergency department, then guess what, your current health situation is not an emergency. One of the biggest causes of pressure on the ER is people who simply do not need to be there. There is a triage system in place. A person who is passed out (unconscious) will always be a higher priority then someone with a broken limb, abdominal pain, etc., regardless of why they are unconscious

Hello again SeeClickFixers!

I want to thank you again for using our site to report issues in your community. As I mentioned earlier, complaining about an issue can only get you so far. It may be more prudent to start collaborating and brainstorming possible solutions to bring up to your public officials. Unconstructive or disrespectful comments may be removed in the future.

Keep SeeClickFixing!

I was there with my broken ankle (because someone forced me to go, even though I know nothign would be done), and a convict came in with a black eye, walking and talking normally, and he was admitted right away. It's B.S.......We should treat the convicts like convicts, that's my solution.

they take "convicts" first because it be an uproar in society if they had inmates sitting in a waiting room for 6 hours.... they get them to the hospital and back as soon as possible safety is paramount

@PAGuy..."The nurses come here and complain that people use the hospital for such problems as a cold or a flu, well where else are they supposed to go?" They are supposed to stay home!! The emergency department is for emergencies! Since when is a cold or a flu an emergency? Thats what people don't get. If you haven't been treated after hours and hours of waiting, do you really need to be there??? The triage system is designed to address clients in a manner that separates the level of acuity. Would you prefer a first-come, first-served system? How much would you like that system when you or a person you love has a REAL emergency? Like a stroke, heart attack, or car accident? Would you prefer that all the cold/ flu people who had arrived before you and your real emergency be treated while you waited? I think not.

Just everyone knows that last comment from "me" was actually just someone who was on my comp and forgot to sign out from under my name. It was not me.

In response to "can't understand" comment about calling in the on call doctor to come in when an emergency comes in is a false statement and it is misleading the public..... There are doctors in the emergency dept 24/7..... They remain in the department doing a 8 hour and sometimes a 12 hour shift..... They do not leave the hospital for their coffee breaks nor their meal breaks.....They do a shift just like the nurses..... Now the person that supposedly made this comment could have just started her first day at work and did not know better of which I do not believe....Or the writer is full of him or herself as this is a bold faced lie..... I don't mind reading these complaints as most have a very good point to make but please do not write false information and I know it is false as I work at this hospital and at this moment I am seeing RED!!!!!!!!!

to everybody who is mad about convicts getting in and out quickly, just think how you would feel sitting next to him/her in the waiting room for 4 hours, maybe you need to sit your young child next to them would that make you feel better. Maybe you would feel safer having to sit next to somebody who is equiped with ankle and wrist shackles all connected with a bright shiny chain!!! lets think about that for a minute!!!!!!

People need to realize we have a two teir health care system here. If you pay for an ambulance, even for your hang nail, you will get in right away! If you can't afford the ambulance, then go break a window at a business then the police will take you there for free and get you rushed in.

@ emma. Thanks for clearing that false statement up. A hospital with no doctors on call? made it sound like at the end of the day the doctors pack up and go home for the night....so far from the truth its funny.!

Its not the regular doctors that are on call its the specialists I believe. When I went in with what I learned later was gall stones they told me they were not going to call the surgeon until after my blood work was in because there was no point in him sitting around for an hour waiting for the bloodwork. I think that "cant understand" just got confused.

Could PACC and SaskPen not just call the hospital when there is a convict needing attention and then have them put in the queue with everyone else and then when it's their turn to go in bring them over, or better yet, once all the taxpayers have been taken care of and there's no body left in the waiting room for them to be of any possible threat to, bring them over? If they end up needing to wait 6-12-18-24 hours in pain sitting in jail that would make more sense than having good honest hard working citizens who aren't in prison wait. It's less than a 5 minute drive from either jail to the hospital with the exception being the women's jail, but even then it's no more than a 10-15 minute trip at most. Or better yet, there has got to be someone on site at each jail who has the proper training who could easily perform the preliminary testing that the triage nurse does and determine if they even need to be there, it's not rocket science. This potentially could prevent the convict from ever even having to leave the jail.

Everyone should just quit complaining, as just go back to school. Need more people in Health field. Better yet, more first nations people should be!

Having a 24 hour minor emergency, would alleviate alot of problems. Take some of the load off the Vic for more serious concerns. The system they had years ago worked well..The various medical clinics had a doctor from their clinic on call afterhours, and the waiting times were minimal because more doctors available. One doctor in ER is not enough even though they have medical students helping.

HAHA At the person who said more first nations should be in the field....WHAT'S STOPPING THEM???!!! They get free schooling, so if that is the solution to the problem, then how do we stop them from being too lazy to go to school? I'm not saying that particular group of people are lazy, just that they don't have to pay out the arse, so what's stopping them?!

Yup i agree with u guest. People have to start teaching their children aboutt he importance of school. I am first nation, and it saddens me that i see alot of crime, drugs, alcohol abuse. We need to start focusing on positive rather than callng first nations lazy and among other things. We need to teach our youth the importance of schooling, jobs.

thats like when i was pregnant went up there at 8pm waited in the waiting room with bad stomach and chest pains (an i was pregnant) waited till midnight then in the exam room i waiting another two hours and guess what...i had a kidney problem! if they wouldve made me wait longer couldve been severe! i dislike the hospital if im sick now i jus tough it out till tommorow the hospital and service there is ridiculous.

This is something that I just do not understand how the Health District can blindly over look for so long! This hospital has to service, the entire city, 3 jails and a very large geographic area surrounding and north of here. Many of the smaller communities around here no longer have doctors and if they do have doctor services or hospitals they are not full time doctors or full scale hospitals.

So it is really not surprising that I have had severe right side abdominal and back pain with vomiting and diarrhea and had to sit in chairs in the hall for 6 hrs, running back and forth to the public bathroom trying not to crap myself and not to throw up all over the floor, before being seen. Then once getting seen ending up being kept for approx. 24 hrs plus while they ran tests and determined why I was so ill and my blood work was so out of whack! If we had a 24 hr clinic much of the wait that night would have been avoided, as many other people there, who stated it right to me, were there because they had a cold for two weeks now that would not go away or were there because they had a head ache, etc, could have gone to or been sent to the 24 hr clinic!

Although, I feel that a 24 hr Walk in Clinic will only truly help alleviate the strain on the Victoria Hospital if it has appropriate services, is strategically located near the hospital and was set up to work in tandem with the Victoria Hospital ER.

Appropriate Services - A 24 hr clinic would greatly reduce the strain if it could provide at least two doctors on at all times, while operating at least a 24 hr basic level lab and better yet a 24 hr x-ray as well. With these services, there would be far less strain on the Victoria Hospital ER, as well as their lab and x-ray during "business hours".

Strategic Placement - By being placed near the hospital, the clinic will have a some what centralized location, that many of the people who are "bogging" down the Emergency room are located in. It also will make it easy to find for those who are coming in from out of town to use the service.

Teamed Up With Victoria Hospital ER - Should a 24 hr clinic be opened, with appropriate services and located near the hospital, then if they determined that a patient needed Emergency care a simple protocol could be set up. Call the ER advise of the patient's imminent arrival, the patient's situation and then digitally/electronically forward the preliminary assessment and any work ups that have already been done. This would effectively reducing stress on both the ER and the patient.

LOL @Complaining about First Nations' schooling. Lets keep it on the subject at hand instead of blaming First Nations people for not getting educated and running the hospital. Sheesh.

@Zathis

Just wanted to clear something up. Being brought in by ambulance does not get you seen right away. My son got injured and we were afraid he had a neck or spinal injury, so we called 911 and got an ambulance. The came and assessed he likely had a broken or dislocated collar bone, we were immediately taken to ER and into the back area, where he sat in a chair in extreme pain for approx 5 hrs before he was even seen!!!

So really you should actually know what you are talking about before you say something. I did not have the money at the time for the ambulance but was not taking the chance of paralyzing my son if he indeed did have a neck or spinal injury. And NO coming in and ambulance did not get him seen immediately!!

What it got me was: the piece of mind that I did not move my son after an accident and possibly cause him permanent damage, it also got me a major ambulance bill: a 6 hr wait in the ER where I witnessed a lady bring her son in and after a few hours of sitting in the waiting room, lie about his symptoms so that he would be seen immediately (she knew the protocol real well for what take precedence over what) and it turned out her son was just fine not a thing wrong with him, as well it got me the wrong diagnosis for my son's injury, which I got a call about 2.5 weeks later to tell me that he was indeed more injured that the doctor originally told us! BUT NEVER IN ANY WAY DID IT GET US A TWO TIER TYPE OF SERVICE, WE WAITED HORRIBLY LONG JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!!

@ Everyone - When you want to fix your plumbing do you ask the guy working at blockbuster? No, so when people who are employed by the health region (myself included) explain the rational for how things work and you don't want to listen, how about you just say "I don't care about other people, I want to be seen first".

I drove by the Vic today and noticed that between the new Victoria Square Compounding Pharmacy and Dr. Java's Coffee House there's now a minor emergency clinic. Maybe with any luck and enough complaints they'll turn it into a 24 hour clinic and an all night coffee shop.....with a late night jazz musician :)

@ emma.....i have experienced taking my sick child into the hospital and the nurse telling me that there was no doctor there!!!! In that time waiting for the doctor my child's lung colapsed, We were in a room and were there for 2 hrs before they called the doctor in and they admitted it to me. So what you are saying is that those nurses lied to me and the doctor who was there let my child suffer unessasarily? Because if that is the case someone needs to be held responsible.

@lol......you make it sound so easy for first nations to get funding. alot of the bands cannot support the amount of people wanting to further their education.......their are limits......its not like we can walk into the the u of s and say "hey im indian i get to be here for free" no...... does not work like that. there is protocol.....and a system to follow just like anywhere else.........this issue has nothing to do with race......it is about a need for a minor emergency clinic that operates 24 hrs...........i know plenty of MOA's and nurses...who would love to see this happen as well........there needs to be two 24 hr walk in clinics one in the eastside of town and one on the west.....this will definatly help with the demand at the vic.......i myself had never had a problem besides the wait.......which is to be expected......we are a hospital centrally located in the province and with all the small town lacking in services we take on that demand.

Good post Dragontamer! you make it sound like a simple solution.......which it is really.......you nailed it on the head........finally a solution worthy to be looked at. thanks for breaking the cycle of mindless rants! seeing is we are here to see click fix.

Please get rid of this garbage!!! \just the odd person making sense and the rest all rediculous comments!!!

I wonder if everyone understands: a clinic is managed by the doctors who staff them. Those doctors leave hospitals after gaining some experience, and become business people, paying their overhead and employees, and seeing us on regular business hours. They do this, because they don`t like being in the hospital at 2:30 am, anymore than we do.

If I was an experienced doctor, I would not bother going through all the trouble of becoming a business owning practitioner, just so I could work the same ungodly hours I already had.

This is one of those issues voting won`t effect. It`s entirely a question of free-will and supply/demand.

If the government intervened and started funding an all night medical support building, it would be called "a hospital"

well GR.. Look at this from a student's point of view...
.
--> It is so hard to find a job in the heath care field because of the lack of jobs in the province.
.
This is called a job creation strategy:
-->We could make more jobs here in OUR city and keep Saskatchewan students IN the province.

Having the minor emergency clinic beside the hospital open 24 hours is a great idea! Maybe enough complaints could get it to be open 24 hours, since there is such a need for it.

i was in the ER yesterday with my son, we got into a room right away, saw the doctor and got lab work and xrays within an hour. he was diagnosed and out of there in about 3 hours, and that included seeing a specialist! we got put ahead of a babbling drunk that cursed at us as we brought him back into the ER! ER stands for EMERGENCY ROOM, not its the middle of the night, and im not feeling well room!!

If only people would go to the Emergency room for emergecies and not bumps bruises and coughs.

was it last year or the year before that....i believe in winnipeg mb, a vagrant or a drunk was out cold in the emergency for hours and no one checked on him because of his state,(maybe he was reaking of listerine) but anyways ....he was dead by the time so one noticed him. so maybe thats why he was treated before your girlrfiend had been seen and another thing, i don't think i'd like a convict sitting in the same waiting as me. But hey thats my oppion

@kristal - Did you even read any of the previous posts? Like seriously, when you learn to spell opinion then you can have one.

@kristal - Think about that for just a second, the non working, non tax paying citizen who decided to spend any money he had on listerine so he could get drunk, died in the waiting room. Maybe he should have spent his money on new clothes or food instead so he could live another day and get a job and be a just a little tiny bit useful in society, and also wouldn't have found himself in the waiting room in the first place. Picture this scenario, your child dies in the waiting room waiting while they had to spend resources treating the guy drunk on listerine and the convict who murdered your husband leaving you a single widowed mother of four first. Welcome to Canadian Health Care.

no one is perfect and life would be boring it was

The person who died in a Winnipeg waiting room *wasn't* a vagrant. He had just come from a doctor's appointment with a doctor's recommendation that he go to the hospital for further investigation into his problems. He sat there for 36 hours before anyone noticed that there was something wrong. Turns out, as I remember, he had a blood infection that could have been easily caught and treated had someone thought to consider him more than a vagrant. He was in a wheelchair, not a regular waiting room chair.

I sincerely doubt that the medical staff are incapable of telling the difference between a life threatening situation and a wait-a-sec one. As for whether or not to treat a drunk or an inmate first, I should think that it all depends on the situation. Concussion, for example, doesn't care if you're drunk, sober or a hockey player. And it's not always something that can be treated 'later'.

If an inmate needs tending after hours, then it's most likely something that can't be handled by the infirmary. Inmates require constant supervision and, as has been proven in all manner of places, given half an opportunity, some will try to escape custody. To lessen that risk, inmates are brought in, treated and then returned to prison. Or would you rather have a hostage situation where you or your kid is kidnapped by an escaping inmate to be used as a shield? Or maybe you'd just rather they held the nursing staff hostage? That would get you treated in a hurry, too, wouldn't it?

Dallas, with all due respect, not everyone has a firm grasp of written English. It's rude to equate literacy skills as a requirement to being respected and dealt with courteously.

too many people clamering at each other...

Real mature. You obviously know who I am and where I work. Why don't you come to my shop and tell me that to my face instead of hiding behind the alias PAGuy.

I want to thank you again for using SeeClickFix to document issues in Prince Albert. As I mentioned earlier, complaining about an issue can only get you so far. It may be more prudent to start collaborating and brainstorming possible solutions to bring up to your public officials. In fact, has anyone signed up local gov't officials to receive alerts in this area?

Similarly, unconstructive or disrespectful comments (i.e. personal attacks) may be removed in the future. Please help us make SeeClickFix a safe and respectful environment!

Keep SeeClickFixing!

This issue will never be resolved, it's PA, nothing ever gets resolved here

@PAguy, funny how on April 2nd you commented "I find the amount of people who personally attack others on this website to be disgusting, I thought we were here to fix things not to attack one another." Then I looked at the comments you have made on other people's posts, about half of them are personal attacks. Get a life. This website is for dishing out your problems in Prince Albert, if you have an issue about personal attacks on here when your the one making them, flag them as inappropriate. I know most of yours should be flagged.

I obviously know this is not the issue at hand, but still it must be said. I am not saying at all that anyones issues are more important medically then others, and yes its very tough to see someone come into the ER needing attention that have obviously brought it on themselves, whether it be alcohol, or drugs. My issue is not to excuse or justify there medical needs above anyone elses, but to just raise the issue of some sort of compassion. So many people like to assume straight off that a "vagrant", or "alcoholic", or "drug abusers", are just lazy, useless people that have chosen this lifestyle.Think for one moment why anyone would want this sort of lifestyle, and I can tell you all honestly, this is no ones dream life-style. These people are victims of many bad circumstances, that have brought them to the level on which they are. Please try to remember that, and have some compassion. You neve know when you may need compassion.

i would like to see the hospital have its own minor emergency department.... 24 hr minor emergency care, separate from the er but still in the hospital.... the triage nurse would triage them to the correct department. i suppose the barrier to this is money.. but i hear mrs. hunt just got a huge raise maybe she'd like to donate her aeromiles points or something ;)

Perhaps if we give the PA health district another 60% raise, it will improve waiting times at the Vic? No? I didn't think so. Maybe instead of paying her almost 300 grand a year, we should see some sort of performance related salary, based on how well the medical services and wait times are here, hmmm?

Well Dallas, Prince Albert suffers from the ' take from the Canadian' syndrome that is utilized by health staff to take advantage of Canadians so the greedy health staff can continue to get $32 per hour and still steal drugs. Another perk, peoples lives are in their hands, they can take their medicine instead of giving it to the patient, and who would do anything about it.

Victim_of_Canada get your facts straight. Not all health care staff gets paid $32/hour. Registered Nurses are the only ones making more than $32/hour. If you even knew half of the things people in healthcare had to deal with you would completely understand most are underpaid. And if anyone ever got caught stealing patient's medication, they wouldn't have a job plain and simple. Maybe you should get some background on what your talking about before you blatently rip apart the people that save countless lives every day.

There is this little 3 digit phone number that helps you get into the Emergency room way faster.... 911. If you have an EMERGENCY then call 911 simple as that. Or maybe when your symptoms start at 9 am go to the walk in minor emergency while its still open. There are many in the city. People blame healthcare for the wait times, I blame the people abusing it. Not saying your girlfriends abdominal pain wasn't worthy because it could have been something quite serious, but the 10 people infront of her with a runny nose, a hang nail, stinky @#$%, etc didn't need to be there. I feel like if you don't think it warrants a call to 911, you can wait til the walk in clinic opens.

there are several issues that need to be dealt with

as the Vic is a repository for all the health issues in the north, something has to happen to sort that issue separately.

Sandy Bay, a community of between 300-400 has on average 2-3 medevacs PER DAY! Every day. the cost of a Medevac flight into/outof there is roughly $10,000. that is $25,000 per day on the Airfare alone. that $9 million a year would go a long way to funding a Hospital in Sandy Bay where it is needed.

other communities have similar situations.

this is not a local issue.

This is a local issue though, we aren't talking about Sandy Bay. They aren't going to build a hospital for a community of 400 people. Even if they built a hospital up north in the middle of all the smaller communities, it wouldn't help Prince Albert a whole lot. Almost everytime you go to the hospital there is an extremely long wait time because there isn't enough doctors sometimes, or too many people in there for minor emergencies, etc.

but part of the reason for long delays is the number of folks from outside the P.A. area that are brought in by ambulance

one early Saturday night, my wife and I waited for several hours, in that time, ambulance arrivals averaged 4/hr.

and when you see how many are brought in by airplane, Everyday, you start to realize that our Health system is severely understaffed, and lacking the logistics.

Even worse is when you hear about closing down ER's like in S'toon! P.A. has only one now.

but my main point is Money is being wasted on travel and NOT on Care!

at least you got help, my complaints were thrown into the wastebasket, not investigated, and told, to go home, i returned later only to get the same denial; I thought when you were injured and went to emergency they actually would investigate your complaint, boy was i wrong;

FYI: if you are injured get the hell out of sask, because they won't help you here

what good is a walk in clinic or a 24 hr emergency clinic when the doctors won't due their job;
how is it that people with spinal injuries are denied any investigation or any help at the Vic or walkin clinics,

Best bet is to go to Saskatoon.