Worker input is needed with Nanaimo Regional General Hospital and ordering systems, says the B.C. Green Party.
The party made a stop at Maffeo Sutton Park on Saturday, ahead of the Tuesday (May 9) general voting day, and Andrew Weaver, B.C. Green leader and Kathleen Harris, B.C. Green Nanaimo candidate, talked health care with the News Bulletin.
Some hospital staff aren’t using the IHealth computer system when ordering medication and tests, opting for the old paper system, and Harris said there needs to be more input from workers in implementation.
“I was involved a little bit when they were introducing it and involved with seeing all the difficulties it presented for the people,” said Harris, a registered nurse and teacher. “It was introduced as a pilot and Nanaimo’s almost had to play the guinea pig role and it was really unfair. It was really poorly implemented and I think most people there will speak to how difficult it was for them. There’s much better ways of doing things.”
The implementation process needs to be done with people and not with a top-down management structure, said Harris.
This isn’t the first time Nanaimo’s hospital has been used for testing, said Weaver.
“Prior to that … the care delivery redesign model where the nurses were very concerned about the fact that it was top-down implementation without consultation in a bottom-up fashion. This has got to stop. That’s not how you deliver services and that’s not how you get by it, whether it be hospitals or in the resource sector. You must work in a bottom-up fashion and that’s the B.C. Green way,” Weaver said.
The senior care sector has expressed concern about lack of community care workers given the aging population. Again, Weaver said solutions must come through collaboration.
“We’re using our acute facilities as chronic care facilities and so we’ve talked about trying to get the chronic care into places and areas where they actually should be, not in acute facilities, in a bottom-up, community-based approach to health care, so it is there in the platform” said Weaver.
“We’re not going to come out with X number of people because making up policy on the fly is not something the Greens do. We’ve committed in terms of directions of funding and priorities, but in terms of specific numbers, that’s something that has to be put together after we talk to people across the province,” Weaver said.
reporter@nanaimobulletin.com