Thank you. Mr. Speaker, one of this Assembly's key mandate commitments is equitable access to sustainable primary care in the NWT. I do believe that this is a sincere commitment. So we should all be alarmed that the primary care system here in Yellowknife, which also serves as an anchor point to many other communities, is on the verge of collapse. I'm hearing from constituents that there is such extreme frustration amongst frontline health care practitioners that a significant number have left their jobs over the past six months and we are in danger of losing the rest. So that's physicians, nurses, NPs, LPNs, and even program assistants.
Over the past year, a major overhaul of primary care was carried out at the same time as a major physical relocation was happening to the Liwego'ati building and not enough care was taken to understand how these changes would impact the day-to-day functioning of primary care practitioners and their patients. As a result, we have taken some major steps backwards in terms of continuity of care and patients' access to doctors. This doesn't seem to have been a temporary blip. It has resulted in lasting chaos, inefficiency, and burnout, not to mention moral distress when physicians are prevented from adequately caring for their patients.
Primary care physicians are telling me that since the overhaul, they've had 50 percent less time in their schedules to see patients. This time must now be spent on paperwork directly caused by the overhaul. The primary care teams were rearranged without meaningful involvement from the practitioners on those teams, resulting in all of the previous physician partner teams being unnecessarily split up. That means that the long-term relationships physicians developed with their partners' patients due to regular coverage was lost. Larger teams also mean that the program assistants and LPNs must take on bigger burdens which can lead to burnout, and it makes the teams less efficient overall.
This is not just a Yellowknife issue as many primary care practitioners regularly serve communities outside Yellowknife, and it goes far beyond a few grumpy staff who simply don't like change or don't want to be team players. Mr. Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent for my last sentence in the statement. Thank you.
---Unanimous consent granted
Thank you to my colleagues. So we have nurses and doctors with decades of experience who have passionately devoted their entire careers and lives to this territory who now feel so defeated that they're ready to quit. So that means we're in trouble until we start listening to them carefully. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Members' statements. Member from the Deh Cho.
