You would have thought that the NDP government in Manitoba would have figured this out. If you are going to announce a big health policy that entails using nurse practitioners to help ease the congestion in ERs and for primary medical care.
Unfortunately, we are now hearing that nurse practitioners were not even consulted when the government of Greg Selinger announced his plans for five clinics that would be staffed by these skilled professionals.
The reactions has been shock among nurse practitioners and an opinion that the policy is not only flawed but could be a failure.
There has been a lot of anger at nurse practitioners for speaking out. Looking at the comments, which I usually try to avoid since they are often made by provocateurs, said the nurses should shut up.
The fact of the matter is that the government will need the nurses on board if they want this policy to succeed. They will have to explain how this policy will work and how it will improve things.
At the moment, we have seen little in the way of a policy paper explaining how this idea was derived and based on what facts.
I am still of the opinion that one of the solutions for the bottlenecks in ERs could be private clinics of doctors running 24 hours a day. However, I would not announce such a policy in government if I hadn't researched it and consulted the various people and organizations that would be needed to run it.
Policy on the fly is no policy at all.
The government has been making bold statements on a variety of issues. If this has been off the cuff stuff because an election is looming, then we could be seeing a whole lot of failure ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment