How a doctor in Red Lake, Ont., contends with that community’s critical physician shortage – CBC
Dr. Akila Whiley says the system is broken, and doctors frequently overwork themselves to compensate
Oct 16, 2023
It’s 9:15 a.m. at Margaret Cochenour Memorial Hospital in Red Lake, Ont., as staff crowd around the white board in the hallway across from the nursing station for their daily huddle.
“Urgent care is not open again,” one person reports with an exasperated emphasis on the word “again.”
It has become a regular occurrence due to the shortage of available physicians in the northwestern Ontario community, which last year was the first in the province to temporarily close its emergency room due to a lack of physicians.
Today, Dr. Akila Whiley is the doctor seeing those patients.
She’s seated at a workstation in an office area behind the nursing station with a pile of charts already on her desk. She wears a beige L.L. Bean knitted pullover and green scrub pants in place of the traditional lab coat.
“I’ve seen a few of the patients who would’ve likely been directed to the urgent care clinic,” she said. “and all of them have something that requires treatment.”
Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/red-lake-doctor-navigates-shortage-1.6991175
