Recruiting difficulties to blame for slow CRH emergency room
By Lethbridge Herald on May 21, 2025.
Editor,
We are the Emergency Medicine physician group at Chinook Regional Hospital in Lethbridge. We want to update the community about the ongoing shortage of doctors in our emergency department. In the summer of 2024, Alberta Health Services (AHS) announced that some days we would have fewer doctors available in the department. Unfortunately, this shortage has continued, and it has aected 5 to 15 days each month since last summer, with at least one doctor missing each of those days. Since early May, we are short at least one doctor every day, and we’re facing the possibility of being down by two doctors on many days in the coming months. This could mean a 30% reduction in available doctor hours compared to what we aim for.
Based on past experience, being short one doctor on a busy day can mean that wait times for less urgent cases could be three to four times longer — for example, we now often see waits of eight hours for what used to be two. So far, we haven’t had a day with two doctors missing, but it’s becoming harder to prevent. If it can’t be avoided, this shortage will further increase wait times for many patients. Studies and local experience both show that long waits lead to worse health outcomes and harm for some patients. This is because it takes longer to see some patients with serious conditions. The stress and moral injury of these unacceptably long waits and compromised patient care weighs on us and our nursing colleagues, and we feel increasingly helpless to prevent it.
In the emergency department, patients are treated based on the severity of their condition. Our doctors and nurses are committed to providing care as quickly as possible to those with serious or urgent health issues. If you believe you or a loved one has a severe illness, please don’t hesitate to come to the emergency department. We appreciate your patience if you have to wait longer for less urgent issues which still require an emergency department visit. If symptoms worsen while you are waiting, please tell the nursing sta right away.
The main reason for this shortage is that it has become increasingly difficult to recruit new emergency doctors for several years. This is part of a larger, nationwide shortage of doctors and a decline in the number of physicians choosing to practice in Alberta. This decline is related to ongoing political instability and the steady loss of the previous Alberta financial advantage. Small cities like Lethbridge face more difficulties attracting new doctors, especially when larger cities are also struggling and actively hiring.
We continue to work hard to recruit more doctors, both with group-initiated efforts, and through AHS. This includes recent and upcoming hires from other countries. We’re also supporting new training programs for physicians in our area. However, time spent training new doctors can further reduce the number of doctors currently available to work shifts.
We thank you for your understanding and patience as we work to address this ongoing challenge. Please make sure your political representatives are aware if this is an important concern for you. As a group we are open to discussions with local elected and community leaders to discuss any initiatives that may help boost recruitment to our city.
Lethbridge Emergency Medical Services Physicians:
Dr. Stephanie Brass
Dr. Richard Buck
Dr. Nathan Coxford
Dr. Ryan Derman
Dr. Nic Hamilton
Dr. Matthew Kriese
Dr. Magdalena Lisztwan
Dr. Duncan Mackey
Dr. Kevin Martin
Dr. Nicholas McPhail
Dr. Bilal Mir
Dr. Wesley Orr
Dr. Sean Patrick
Dr. Kiersten Schwann
Dr. Alan Wilde
Dr. Sean Wilde
25-24
When you allow Reformers to treat doctors, nurses, teachers and students like third class citizens this is what you get. They don’t want to work in Alberta. One of the doctors I helped relocate when Klein was treating them badly said it best:
“Why should I stay in Alberta and support my patients when my patients have refused to support me against this tyrant Ralph Klein? Doctors can work wherever they want to and get the respect they so rightly deserve , they don’t get it in Alberta, so why should we stay?”
The true conservatives under Lougheed and Getty never treated them like this as our relatives and friends state when they worked in the medical system, so why are we letting these Reformers do it?
I have never forgotten the nurses bawling their eyes out in my office as a Royal Bank Manager when Klein destroyed their careers. Some were single moms, with teenage kids, and could no longer make their mortgage payments and I couldn’t help them. It broke my heart.
I helped 9 doctors and at least two dozen nurses relocate out of this province and not one wanted to go, they had family and friends here, so why would they? Klein left them no choice and we still hadn’t recovered from his stupidity before Smith began making the situation even worse, that’s how stupid Albertans are isn’t it?