Baby's death raises questions about doctors' availability

The death of a 4-month old baby is raising questions about how many doctors are in this province. Over the weekend, the emergency room at the Tracadie-Sheila hospital was forced to close because no doctors could work. That meant a sick baby was taken to a hospital much farther away and didn't survive.

The story began around 10:30 Saturday morning. 911 operators received a call from distraught parents in Tracadie Sheila. Their baby boy was unconscious and had stopped breathing.

Any other day, the ambulance would have rushed the baby to emergency at the local Tracadie-Sheila hospital. But this weekend, the Tracadie Hospital's emergency room was closed because no doctor was available.

Instead, the baby was taken to Caraquet, 25 minutes farther by ambulance. Fifteen minutes after arriving at the Caraquet hospital, the baby was pronounced dead.

The coroner is investigating the baby's death and hospital officials are already insisting there's no link between the death and the closed emergency room in Tracadie.

The death highlights how difficult it has become for rural hospitals to serve their communities. As in many places in New Brunswick, Tracadie-Sheila has a doctor shortage. Doctor Annette Seguin, Vice President of the Region 6 Hospital Corporation, says Tracadie hospital often has to scramble to find doctors to work weekend shifts in emergency.

"We're having difficulty in recruiting. Right now there are three vacant positions in Tracadie. We also have one of our physicians who's on maternity leave and another who can only provide half of the amount of time she use to provide covering emergency because she has health difficulties," she says.

This is the second time the Tracadie-Sheila hospital has closed its emergency in the last six months because it couldn't find enough doctors. At least one other hospital in the province has done the same. Tracadie-Sheila MLA Elvy Robichaud says the government's doing its best to fix the problem.

The province was trying to recruit as many as 40 physicians for the province and we're trying to do that as quickly as possible. And, mind you, some situations like we've had this weekend in Tracadie happened but what the corporation is telling me that at this point they're very confident that we'll have three additional doctors by the end of the summer.

This death may not have been avoidable but it still draws attention to the issue of an overstressed hospital system. And with summer coming, and doctors and nurses taking time off for vacation, it's likely to get even worse.