If the health sector is delighted to be one of the parties’ number one priorities during this electoral campaign, the New Brunswick Medical Society “would like more”.
All parties have made promises regarding health, a major issue for New Brunswickers.
The Liberals have set it as one of the two priorities of their electoral platform. The party is the one that has made the most announcements on this subject. Their signature promise is the opening of 30 community care clinics across the province.
Dr. Lise Babin, president-elect of the New Brunswick Medical Society, welcomes this promise. The organization, which represents more than 2,000 doctors, called for the expansion of this type of clinic.
She believes that it must be part of the solution, we are pushing for that. We know that collaborative practices increase access because there are health teams, not just a doctor who sees one patient in his office at a time.
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Véronique Landry is a professor at the University of Moncton. (Archive photo)
Photo : Radio-Canada / Monique Boudreau
Another Liberal promise is to offer retention bonuses to nurses. For Véronique Landry, professor at the master’s degree in nursing and nurse practitioner at the University of Moncton, this is a short term solution
.
She believes that this can help retain certain nurses but that we should not only look at the question of the wallet. According to her, we must also tackle the working conditions which are a key issue, workload, patient ratio, flexibility of hours
. This is a work of long-winded
to modify the system.
On the Progressive Conservative side, the only promise regarding health to date is to expand the scope of practice of health professionals, such as nurse practitioners, pharmacists and paramedics, to make access to primary care more efficient. .
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Dr. Lise Babin, president-elect of the New Brunswick Medical Society.
Photo : Radio-Canada
Dr. Lise Babin again sees this idea favorably. However, she believes that it is necessary have a good communication mechanism between professionals to monitor the patient. If a healthcare professional works in a silo it is not what is best for the patient in terms of continuity of care.
The Greens, for their part, want to increase the salaries of nurses in the province to the level of those in other Maritime provinces and create 70 collaborative family practice teams.
The Medical Society wants more commitments
For the president-elect of the Medical Society, the promises from all parties are positive and respond to several concerns of the profession. However, we would like more. No matter who wins the day after the election, we will be at the table and we will continue to push. It is a priority for all citizens
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Dr. Lise Babin also believes that we need to look at the remuneration of family doctors. She believes that it is currently a matter ofan obstacle to attracting medical students.
With information from Karine Godin, from Téléjournal Acadie
