Thank you. The question I have, Mr. Speaker, is to the Minister of Health and Social Services with regard to the issue of nurses in small communities. Can the Minister tell the House how many communities do not have a full-time nurse?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Once again, every community has nursing services. I believe the Member is asking how many communities have nurses that don’t live there. I don’t know exactly what number. I believe it’s four or five, perhaps six. I have to get back to the Member.
The community of Colville Lake has community health representatives. It’s not a health centre; it’s a nursing station. These good dedicated people work throughout the year. They have needed some training to just do the basic health care services in Colville Lake. I want to ask the Minister as to the level of comfort... As Mrs. Groenewegen has indicated, when people know there is a nurse in the community, there is some level of comfort for people. The people in Colville Lake are also trained throughout the year. Regarding training our community health representatives that don’t have a full-time nurse living in communities, is there adequate training for these people to take on the job 24/7 in the communities?
Colville Lake is one of the communities, along with some others that do not have a resident nurse. They have a half-time homecare support worker and a community health rep. They are very closely supported by the nursing centre in Fort Good Hope. They do visits to Colville Lake regularly and I am aware that they are in constant touch by phone and the community health reps in Colville Lake are trained to provide services. That is the case for all of the other facilities in the Territories. Not only for community health reps, but even for other health care professionals like nurses, because everyone in the field needs constant training and support. Thank you.
The health care services to Colville Lake by the Sahtu Health Board, mainly the community of Fort Good Hope, has provided an increase of health care into Colville Lake. I spoke to the health representatives and they are happy they are seeing more regular visits by the nurse. Also they made mention that they would like to see more training for an additional position, because it gets quite heavy in terms of their responsibility as a health care professional. Would the Minister look at program funding in terms of having an additional person in Colville Lake to help out and offset health care services in Colville?
Once again, the Sahtu Health Authority does review the workload and, in fact, they have tried to do a different model of delivery where the community health rep and homecare support services were combined in some communities. I believe the authority is reviewing that, so I will undertake to discuss with the authority and get back to the Member.
