1 doctor of anesthesia at Swift The area that the current hospital serves is hundreds of square kilometer
Southwest Saskatchewan women who are pregnant say they don’t know where to have their babies.
That’s because the Cypress Regional Hospital in Swift Current, which serves hundreds of square kilometers, has only one anesthesiologist, who may not be working when they go into labor.
“Just the thought of giving birth is stressful. “In this day and age, this seems very strange,” said Caitlin Willman, whose baby is due in less than a month.
An anesthesiologist is a doctor who has had extra training for several years and gives sedatives and other drugs during hospital surgeries and a wide range of other procedures. If you don’t have enough medicine, you could be in a lot of pain, but if you take too much, you could die.
Anesthesiologists help with everything from major injuries in the emergency room to the removal of kidney stones. They also help people give birth.
About 225 km west of Regina is the city of Swift Current.
Nearly a dozen pregnant or recently pregnant women from southwest Saskatchewan were interviewed by CBC News.
Karolin Evenson had her baby in Swift Current’s Cypress Regional Hospital in June, but she’s not sure she’d “take that chance again.”
Evenson lives southwest of Swift Current, about 90 minutes away. She went into labor on a Thursday and thought that everyone would be there. When she got there, the anesthesiologist told her that he would only be there for another seven hours.
Evenson said that the nurses and doctors were just as scared as she was.
“They were watching the clock,” she said.
“What happens if something does go wrong?”So there was, “Oh my goodness, the clock is ticking. Will I have to go to Regina?’ It was scary, like a time bomb.
Everything was going well, but then she stopped making progress. Doctors told her that she might need a caesarian section, which needs anesthesia. It had been more than seven hours. The long shift of the anesthesiologist was over, and he left.
Things started to move again, and Evenson was able to give birth naturally in Swift Current. She said she doesn’t want to think about what would have happened to her or the baby if she had to be put in an ambulance and driven 250 kilometers to Regina for the caesarian.
But that wasn’t the end of all the excitement. Evanson did not give birth to all of her placenta. She needed surgery right away.
“They told me I had to go to the operating room for an operation. They said I’d need to be asleep but still aware. It’s usually done by an anesthesiologist, so I was wheeled down to the operating room. “It was kind of scary,” she said.
“I found out later that I was the first person to go to the operating room (OR) without an anesthesiologist. I found it very scary.”
A doctor in the emergency room put her to sleep. The surgery worked well.
“I was lucky to have a great nurse and great doctors, too. It’s just too bad that they all had to be in that situation. It scared me. I was pretty scared. Even more so right after giving birth, when emotions are already running high.”
Dr. Francisco Garcia, a urologist in Swift Current, said that the shortage affects a wide range of hospital services.
“I would be ready for a full day of surgery, but when we only have one anesthesiologist and a couple of unexpected caesarean sections come up, the baby has to come first. “I’ve lost whole days because of that, and I can’t do much about it,” he said.
Garcia said that these people are moved up, which moves others down the list, and so on.
He said the anesthesiologist is not to blame. He said that the man, who is in his mid-70s, is doing all he can.
“It’s hard for just one person to keep the whole surgery program going. This particular anesthesiologist is his own kind of hero in some ways. He’s doing a lot more than I think anyone could be asked to do. Garcia said, “He is really pushing himself as far as I think anyone should be asked to.”
Garcia said that the shortage also hurts the hospital’s ability to do research and come up with new ideas, which are important parts of health care in rural areas.
“We were actually training on a new technology, a new tool we were going to try to bring in for a certain type of surgery. “The technology was there, the device rep was there, and everything was ready to go,” he said.
Because there was no anesthesiologist, “we weren’t able to turn on [the device] all day,” he said.
In an email, a person from the Saskatchewan Health Authority said that women can still give birth at the Swift Current hospital. If there isn’t an anesthesiologist on duty and the patient is considered to have a “high-risk delivery,” they are sent to a different hospital that can give them the care they need.
The SHA said that there is a shortage of these specialists across the country, but that it is doing its best to hire more.
Most pregnant women who were talked to said they might skip Swift Current and go to Moose Jaw, Regina, or Medicine Hat instead.
“If they say, ‘Hey, there’s no anesthesiologist right now and you’re in active labor. You have to make a decision.’ Caitlin Willman said, “I’m not willing to take that risk if there are service interruptions while I’m in labor.”
“Yeah, a lot of things add stress that really shouldn’t be there,” she said.