A familiar problem, still searching for a solution

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/03/2025 (203 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should.

A shortage of midwives has caused Prairie Mountain Health to announce that it is suspending its at-home birthing services throughout southwestern Manitoba for the next six months.

Beginning on April 1 — just five days from now — the midwifery unit will be pausing birth and on-call services, and will only be offering prenatal, post-partum and newborn appointments until Sept. 30.

In the interim, physicians and nurses will be responsible for delivering babies in the region, while midwives will offer support with birth planning.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara says the situation has been caused by a midwife taking leave, but this is the second time that expectant mothers have recently been blindsided by staffing shortages at Prairie Mountain Health.

Just three months ago, the health authority issued a media alert, warning that a “temporary disruption” was expected to occur at the Brandon Regional Health Centre due to the “unexpected absence” of a medical provider. Expectant mothers and anyone seeking maternity services during that 24-hour period were advised to access care at another health-care centre or facility.

That crisis was only averted, however, when doctors from outside of Brandon stepped up to fill the vacant shifts.

At the time, maternity nurses indicated that they had never seen a closure of maternity services for that reason in their careers, and warned that “It could happen again.”

Their warning may not have been taken seriously given that, at the same time, residents of the area were being assured that two new OB/GYN doctors would soon begin work at the BRHC.

Just three months later, however, the availability of midwifery services is being impacted by staffing shortages, and not just for a few days. The decision creates another layer of anxiety for pregnant women throughout Westman, and it’s fair to ask if this situation could have been avoided.

Prairie Mountain Health CEO Treena Slate says that recruitment efforts are ongoing in the region, but the Manitoba College of Midwives says that demand for its members’ services continues to exceed the current supply. The budget tabled by the Manitoba government last week includes a $1.1-million commitment to hire seven midwives and ensure that University of Manitoba graduates immediately receive a local job offer, but is that enough graduates to address the serious shortage across the province?

The College of Midwives appears to be suggesting that it isn’t, and the fact that midwifery services have been shut down in Westman due to just one midwife taking leave reinforces their point. Given that reality, how confident can we be that services will resume in six months, as the RHA claims? What will happen if another midwife takes leave, becomes ill or leaves to work elsewhere?

We agree with Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook, who says that expectant mothers deserve better than this, but we are concerned that the problems that have occurred with respect to baby delivery services in the past few months are a symptom of a much larger problem at Prairie Mountain Health and throughout the province.

Last November, doctors at the Brandon Regional Health Centre called upon Asagwara to address a “dire staffing crisis” that they claimed was putting the hospital’s emergency room “on the brink of collapse.”

They warned that “In our current conditions, we WILL experience a catastrophic outcome that could have been prevented … We are asking that you please hear our pleas for help, for the safety of our staff, patients and community.”

The provincial government claims it is making progress in the hiring of additional health-care professionals, but are the new hires even keeping pace with the numbers of doctors, nurses and other workers who are leaving? The closures and near-closures that have occurred over the past several months suggest that isn’t the case.

Residents of Westman deserve to feel confident they will receive the health care they need, when they need it. Beyond that, they are also entitled to honest frankness from their government regarding the seriousness of the problems our health-care system is facing, what the solutions are to those problems and how long it will take before those solutions accomplish positive results.

Until that happens, nobody should be surprised if paper-thin staffing levels will continue to impact the quality of care in Westman.