On the night table: Alan Doyle

Steinbach ER nurses ask for triage help as wait-averse Winnipeg patients strain hospital capacity

Forty nurses from the hospital’s emergency department signed an open letter stating because of the current staffing ratio, nurses are witnessing “excessive and unacceptable safety risks on a daily basis.”

Former, current care home operators deny responsibility in resident’s 2024 death

An 85-year-old died because of her medical conditions, not neglect or abuse at a Winnipeg long-term care home, the facility’s current and former operators say in response to a wrongful death suit launched by the woman’s daughter.

Cari Goncalves filed her claim in the Court of King’s Bench in March on behalf of her mother Olga Ozubko’s estate, naming Revera and Extendicare, as well as a numbered Ontario company that owns the property where Poseidon Care Centre is situated, as defendants.

Revera operated the home until August 2023, when Extendicare took over.

Ozubko died in hospital on Sept. 15, 2024, following a medical emergency days earlier at the care home, where she had lived since August 2022.

Hydro CEO needs to reckon with winds of change

Methinks Hydro CEO Allan Danroth protests too much.

On the night table: Alan Doyle

Alan Doyle

Singer-songwriter and author, The Smiling Land

I spent most of the summer in Charlottetown with the musical Tell Tale Harbour and I read, for the first time in my life, L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. And I’m telling you right now, it’s awesome. I know that won’t come as a surprise to most readers. I don’t know why, but I had never read it — I guess it was never assigned at school or something. Anyway, it was my second summer in Charlottetown, and I said “I’ve got to read Anne of Green Gables,” so I did. It’s like a Dickens book or something set in Atlantic Canada. It’s a very cool slice of time, and I highly recommend it.

Government overrides school board in ‘mature minor’ controversy

The Manitoba government has vetoed the Steinbach school board’s plan to override common law by making parents the ultimate authority on all student health issues.

Since Hanover School Division trustees approved a motion to disregard the category of “mature minors” just over two months ago, there has been widespread debate.

Trustees unanimously voted to stop honouring the mature minor doctrine — in which teenagers 16 and older are automatically assumed to have the maturity to make medical decisions for themselves — at the end of the 2025-26 school year.

“We would just encourage the Hanover School Division to do what they do best, which is providing high-level, quality education for the kids in their community,” Education Minister Tracy Schmidt said in an interview on Tuesday about her July 22 directive to the board to repeal its motion.