Editor:
Re: Ambulance wait times prove need for private health care, Letters to the editor, Sept. 3.
The shortage of nurses, paramedics, doctors is concerning to all of us.
It is hard to understand how switching to a private-sector model could help — there would still be the same number of nurses, paramedics and doctors in B.C. as today. Is the proposed solution to raise the pay scale that nurses, paramedics and doctors are lured from other provinces or out of the B.C. care system? Who would benefit?
B.C. should be working aggressively and quickly to evaluate foreign trained medical professionals to have them safely and successfully registered in our health system.
One simple change could make more ambulances and paramedics available; now ambulance paramedics arriving at a hospital emergency must stay with the patient till admitted — minutes or hours. Why not have a small team of paramedics (with identical training) at the ambulance entrance receive a technical briefing on the patient, take care of the patient, and allow the mobile ambulance to attend to the next emergency?
Margaret Miller
