Maddy

When the knowledge of two previous airlift emergencies wasn't enough, a 13-hour wait for an impending life-threatening situation was what awaited a terrified mother as her daughter was having chest pains, once again.

"She feels in situations like this, a person’s medical history should be a big part of the triage process." Saltwire

No kidding eh? Perhaps triage needs a gentle nudge in a more modern direction. A newer software solution should be a relatively easy fix compared to somehow recruiting health professionals en mass. A solution that we can crowdsource with the guidance of actual medical professionals. Input from the frontline staff, all the way up to the doctors and surgeons that will see them. I'm not going to pretend that I even understand what triage wants or even needs in such a system, but perhaps a popup with the last emergency visit or some indication that said patient has had or requires special care would be useful. Something indicating that a preexisting condition may be at play here.

Personally, I had been to emergency for internal pain undiagnosed many times one year and I had to fight tooth and nail to get an x-ray to accurately assess what the cause was. Obviously, our medical care staff are overworked and understaffed, but as a person fighting to get the care I needed, I found it difficult under duress.  As a province, we need to readdress our methods and procedures. Under stress, it's difficult for the best of us to make logical, accurate decisions and we need a way to simplify and speed up our emergency room fiasco.

New Scotlanders are searching for solutions that decades of neglect can't fix. Our medical system is broken here in Nova Scotia and it's not just having enough Doctors, but, the fundamentals and systems within health machine as well that needs an overhaul. Can we get some form of commitment from Tim that our *fix is coming at a unilateral, multifaceted approach? Please don't waste tens of millions with ill-gotten marketing campaigns for foreign doctors when some of that money could be spent streamlining systems and increasing efficiency within what we have already.

Let's do this Tim and fix the sitch.

Patrick O'Neal