Interior Health continues to try and actively recruit a nurse practitioner for the Community Health Centre at Thompson Rivers University in Williams Lake that remains closed.
Services have been suspended since last December following the resignation of lead nurse practitioner Sandra Lachapelle.
IH Director of Clinical Operations, Berni Easson says they have had no success in filling the position as of yet.
“We’ve been continuing to work with all of our primary care providers and the information for the patients remains the same that we had provided last year in regards to visiting the Borland Medi -Clinic and location pharmacists being available to assist,” she says.
“There’s also the 811 HealthLink phone line and then we had provided information as well around access for mental health substance use services for folks and giving them some contact information as well as access for public health services, and then of course if there are true emergencies access to 911 and the Cariboo Memorial Hospital emergency room.”
Easson says there are primary healthcare needs throughout the province.
As well as continuing to actively recruit for the Cariboo, Easson says they are also planning as a team looking at how they can move forward to enhance primary care services.
“We know that we have limited numbers of primary care providers so we’re looking at all other resources that can help to align the care with the right care provider so that we free up our primary care providers to do the primary care,” Easson says.
“So we’re working on some planning in that regard and we hope to have more information to share with the communities early in the new year as we finalize some of those plans and we’ll be for sure communicating that as we get further along with that process.”