The B.C. government is expanding its community paramedic program from six to 73 communities, to stabilize their employment in rural areas by extending their hours and their duties.
Those duties will include visits to nursing homes and private homes, replacing on-call rural paramedic positions with full-time or half-time jobs in places that may see only one or two emergency calls in a week.
Logan Lake is one of the communities that will receive this program, and it’s one Mayor Robin Smith says the community has been lobbying for since it was left without a doctor in the community a few years ago.
“For us, it was a really nice stop-gap between not having a physician and having to take off to hospital every time you needed something minor,” she said.
Logan Lake currently has a physician working in the community, but that doesn’t mean the program won’t serve a need.
“We have a lot of elderly people, and although there’s always driving programs and things like that, it just makes sense for paramedics to be able to utilize the skills they already have,” Smith said.
Logan Lake is expected to receive the service over the next year.
Health Minister Terry Lake said there are already jobs posted for communities in the Northern Health region, after a successful pilot project in six communities. Recruiting will begin in the Interior Health region in early 2017 and in the Vancouver Island and Vancouver Coastal regions by spring of 2017.
“While you’re not on call-outs, you can go into a nursing home and talk with patients,” Lake said of the new paramedic roles. “You may be doing CPR training, you may be doing chronic disease management in people’s homes.”
Experience in other provinces has shown that community paramedics can reduce emergency room visits and keep chronic patients in their homes longer, Lake said.
Bronwyn Barter, president of CUPE local 873 representing 3,900 ambulance paramedics, said the union and local politicians have been advocating for the approach since 2013. It allows paramedics to make a living in smaller communities.
Rhiannon Davis works as a paramedic in Tofino, one of the six pilot communities. She said the new role allows her to develop relationships with people in the area and understand their needs, preventing rather than waiting for emergencies.
