Glen Abernethy

As I indicated previously, the territorial model’s primary goal is to support the knowledge and skill capacity of community health nurses through continued interaction and direct clinical support with midwives. This will benefit all NWT communities by raising the standard of community maternity care. This is one of the primary goals of a territorial program. There’s also the secondary benefit of being able to provide some midwifery support to residents of Yellowknife who choose to access those types of services.

The fact is, at the end of the day, if a patient is at risk, if there are any...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of the challenges we face around midwifery and providing birthing services in communities outside of Fort Smith, Hay River, Yellowknife and Beaufort-Delta, Inuvik in particular, is that we need to make sure the facilities are appropriate, that individuals can receive the proper diagnostic and specialist obstetric or services such as C-section. Most of our communities don’t have the capacity to provide that type of service. So we need to make sure we focus our attention where we can actually provide birthing services.

What we’re talking about now is pushing midwifery...

Thank you. That’s certainly an interesting concept and certainly something that I will have the department look at. At this time I cannot say that there are actual funds available to do this exact thing, this exact roundtable of conversation, but it’s something that’s certainly interesting and I’ll have the department take a look at it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We don’t actually have any programs at this time dedicated strictly or particularly to post-traumatic stress disorder, but we do have psychiatric assessment and treatment that is available both on an in-patient and outpatient basis. So if an individual is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, they can access outpatient care or treatment through a referral from a nurse or a doctor or other professionals here in the Northwest Territories. So I would strongly encourage individuals who are going through this to get in touch with their medical practitioners. Thank...

Yes, understood.

Mr. Speaker, this is true for all the communities in the Northwest Territories where we don’t have emergency rooms, so many of our small communities are in this particular situation.

When an individual in one of these communities is sick or experiencing an emergency, there are numbers they can call into their health centre, whether it’s a community health nurse or, in the case of Tsiigehtchic, CHR or CHW, or in Tsiigehtchic they may actually choose to call the emergency room. Those professionals will still be able to contact Med-Response to help coordinate medical response in those communities...

Once we have a better idea of what the program is and what it offers, it’s something we may be able to do, but at this time I just don’t know enough about it to say yes or no.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The reviews the Member is talking about are all part of the entire health transformation we’re going through right now where we’re looking at how we’re providing services in all communities throughout the Northwest Territories in order to enhance services. That work is ongoing. The legislation will be coming in front of this House shortly and the planning will continue through to 2016, when we hope to go live.

But at the same time, we’re not just waiting for that to happen. We are implementing Med-Response, which I’ve mentioned several times in the House. We did a soft...

At this point in time there is no intention to build a territorial treatment facility in the Northwest Territories. We will continue to utilize the incredible facilities that we use in the South that are giving a wide range of programs and services to the people of the Northwest Territories; we will continue to deliver on-the-land programming through our Aboriginal partners, which the money has been put in the budget to do so; and we are continuing to pursue the mobile treatment options, which I would be happy to discuss with Members more.

With respect to withdrawal management, that is in the...

The work has begun but it is not concluded.