Rural paramedic shortage called a crisis

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This article was published 13/01/2025 (293 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A rural paramedic staffing shortage has left some communities in western Manitoba with more vacancies than staff.

“We have front-line workers today saying that this is a crisis happening right now,” Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook said Monday. The workers flagged concerns about dire staffing shortages in key emergency medical services stations, Cook said.

Shoal Lake’s station has one paramedic for 13 intended positions, Virden has nine of 17 positions filled, Russell has five of 13 and Erickson has two of four filled, the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals confirmed.

Cook said massive geographic areas of the province have been left without sufficient services.

“It’s a serious problem but not a new problem,” said Rural Municipality of Yellowhead Mayor Merv Starzyk.

“It’s been going on for years. It’s just not being taken seriously enough.”

Manitoba’s health minister said it was “pretty rich” for the PCs to complain about a paramedic shortage.

“The shortages we’re facing today are a direct result of PC cuts and negligence,” Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said in an email Monday.

The Tories closed 23 rural emergency medical stations, cut millions from rural health authorities’ budgets, denied rural Manitobans access to advanced care paramedics and pushed 90 rural paramedics out the door, Asagwara said.

“We’ve spent the last year turning the ship around,” the health minister said, pointing to the creation of a recruitment and retention office to bring more health-care workers to Manitoba.

An update on the number of paramedics hired was not provided.

The province contributed $16 million to staff a third ambulance stationed in Brandon and funded 16 additional training seats at Red River College Polytech for advanced care paramedics to work in rural and northern Manitoba, Asagwara said. It’s also setting up community paramedicine units across the province.

Starzyk said he recently met with the one local paramedic at the station that’s supposed to have a staff of 13.

“He was concerned he was going to get burned out,” Starzyk said.

The paramedic is a “local chap, who likes his job and wants to see things work.” The worker was also worried about staffing shortages at rural hospitals, he said. When emergency departments have to close as a result, paramedics may have far to go to see a patient in a life-or-death situation.

In Prairie Mountain Health, seven of 30 emergency rooms were operating at full capacity and open 24-7 in December. Hospitals across the region were closed 89 days that month, with some emergency departments closed for more than half the month.

On Jan. 1, four of 15 ambulances were in service for western Manitoba below Riding Mountain National Park because of staffing shortages, the president of the association representing rural paramedics said Monday.

“Those day-to-day impacts are awful,” said Jason Linklater, who noted the shortage is provincewide.

“Many rural communities are waiting an hour or more for an ambulance. In a medical emergency, I have heard some families are not calling 911. They just get them to the nearest emergency room themselves if they’re able to.”

A spokesman for Shared Health said anyone experiencing a medical emergency in the province should never hesitate to call 911 or their local emergency phone number. “EMS services throughout rural and northern Manitoba deploy resources based on the probability of call activity and adjust resources to ensure responses are as timely as they can be.”

Linklater said Shared Health needs a greater sense of urgency in its hiring.

“They have been driving applicants away by trying to force them into specific positions or areas, when they are needed everywhere. They should post positions, hire continuously, and don’t make applicants wait for quarterly hiring intakes, which is the process that’s in place now,” he said.

The province should resume rotating rural paramedic training programs discontinued under the previous government, Linklater said.

“Once people have to leave the community for training and they’re gone for a while, it’s really hard to get them back,” said Cook.

Providing housing to paramedics has also been suggested, said Starzyk, who will meet with Shared Health next month to discuss the situation.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca