Letters: Fear, frustration with current state of health care

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Use lottery cash to attract doctors, nurses

Well, I am now officially scared.

No longer am I able to relax in the knowledge that if I have a health issue requiring attention will I be getting that attention from the local hospitals which I and other New Brunswick tax payers have supported for decades. Now I have to be literally dying to gain admission to the emergency department. Anything less than a life or death situation for me means being sent home to do my own battle or perhaps wait 30 hours or so to see a doctor that my tax dollars help pay.

I can remember my mother, who at the time was in her late 80s, having to wait well over 18 hours in the emergency department a number of years ago. Nothing much has changed over the years despite countless attempts from our elected experts to correct this ageless problem. The waiting rooms were filled back when I was much younger and they are still filled today. Nothing has really changed in decades.

Maybe it stays the same so politicians can have something to promise during election campaigns. Stranger things have happened.

But here’s a thought. The Atlantic Lottery Cooperation is constantly bragging its profits go directly back into the community and its profits are in the tens of millions of dollars every year. Since the hospitals are part of our community can we not afford extra doctors and staff from that money? Just a thought. After all, do we really want to be a province where waiting to see a doctor takes longer than having your lottery-won new Ferrari built?

Bill Read

Moncton

Government solution only breeds frustration

If you, or a loved one, are waiting for placement in long term care, regardless of how long you have already waited or where you stand on the list, the government has just added at least a month longer to your wait. 

On January 4th the Department of Social Development put out a directive to all nursing homes in the Saint John region to only take people from the hospital until January 18th, at which time the government would review the situation. On January 18th the government extended this directive until February 4th and to Fredericton and Moncton when it will be reviewed again.  

This means anyone on the waiting list, and at home, will not be given the opportunity to have the placement they have been waiting patiently for.   

The hospitals are at a critical state with too many beds being taken up by people waiting for LTC and this is the government’s way of fixing the issue. How is the problem going to be fixed when they are still filling those beds with more people waiting?    

The government is not considering the mental or physical well-being of the person waiting at home or their caregivers.   

Do the people at home never get their chance?

Carol O’Brien-Boucher

Saint John