Ten Years Later, Rally's Accomplishments Long
By 250 News
Monday, June 14, 2010 04:32 AM
Prince George, B.C.- In a little over a week, it will be a full ten years since the people of Prince George and the region, were called to a rally at what was then the Multiplex in Prince George.
The rally was called as a way of raising awareness and starting the work towards improving the delivery of health care in the north of B.C., in particular it was the springboard for the development of the Northern Medical Program at UNBC. Designed to address the challenges of physician recruitment and retention, the program believes if physicians are trained in the north, they will stay in the north. The program has become recognized around the world, and this year, its first group of graduates will have completed residency.
While we all know the results of the “rally”, few know the story of how it got started and who was involved.
There would have been no rally, no Northern Medical Program had it not been for one phone call on the morning of Sunday June 18th to the home of radio talk show host Ben Meisner.
The call came at about 10:00 a.m. and the person making the call was Glen Parrett, a B.C. Supreme Court Justice. “He told me something had to be done about the state of health care delivery in this part of the province” says Ben Meisner, “ and he insisted I contact my friend Gord Leighton. Gord was not only a good friend, but was a City Councillor at the time. He had been the General Manager of the local T.V. and radio station for a long time and knew just about everybody who was anybody.”
Prince George had been struggling with the recruitment and retention of medical specialists. The Prince George Regional Hospital was down to two orthopaedic surgeons at the time, the local ear nose and throat specialist was planning his retirement and there was no replacement in the wings. Finding a General Practitioner who was taking new patients was next to impossible. Glen Parrett says at the time, there had been several stories about health care in the region, “I got the feeling that we were on the edge of being stripped back to nothing, that if we didn’t stand up and fight for it, health care in this part of the province would be descimated.”
Meisner says he called Leighton, urged him to come to Meisner’s home where Leighton, Meisner and Glen Parrett could talk about the best way to get some attention and some action to turn things around.
The trio spent a few hours discussing who should be contacted and Meisner and Leighton split up the list of people to call to invite to a breakfast meeting that would be held on Monday at the Coast Inn of the North in Prince George. One thing was clear from the start, they didn’t want any capital “P” politics to play a role in whatever action was taken, “This was all about a unified front of northerners calling for action regardless of their political stripes” says Meisner.
The following morning, there were 22 people at the breakfast session representing a cross section of the northern community:
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Name
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Representing
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Gord Bliss
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self
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Vic Bowman
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Chamber of Commerce
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Birthe Cisecki
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BCNU
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Sonja Damani
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HEU
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Bob Headrick
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Regional District of Fraser Fort George
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Ken Killcullen
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CKPG/CKKN FM
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Colin, Kinsley
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City of Prince George
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Del, Laverdure
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Prince George Citizen
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Gord Leighton
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Self
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Brenda Levesque
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CKPG T.V.
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Bill Lynch
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Self
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Tom Madden
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City of Prince George
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Fred McLeod
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HSA
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Ben Meisner
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CKPG
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Reverend Lance Morgan
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Roy Nagel
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Central Interior Logging Association
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George, Paul
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City of Prince George
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Sherry Sethen
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Chamber of Commerce
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Terry Shepherd
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CJCI/CIRX
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Tom Steadman
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Self
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Mike Woodworth
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Monarch Broadcasting
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Don Zurowski
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Self/councillor
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According to the minutes of that meeting, it was agreed they would go ahead with plans to hold a community rally, it was set for Thursday June 22nd, just three days away. The location was confirmed and it was agreed it would start at 5:30 p.m and last no more than 90 minutes.
The group called upon Reverend Lance Morgan to be their spokesperson and meeting chair.
The first meeting established several objectives for the rally:
· To provide a sense of community to all participants that we’re in this together
· Demonstrate that as a community, we care,
· Garner media attention locally, provincially and nationally,
· Be clear that the rally is just the beginning, that it would the launching pad for a northern, community based initiative to stay with this issue until it is resolved
· Importantly, to give the community hope.
With just three days to go, there was a lot of work to be done, not the least of which was to get the word out about the rally and why people should attend.
The following day, there were eight others who would join the breakfast session:
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Perry Cook
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Paul Nettleton/The Buffalo Group
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Frank Everitt
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IWA
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Don Grantham
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Councillor
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Lyn Hall
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Dr. Charles Jago
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UNBC
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Ann Krauseneck
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PG and District Labour Council
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Dale McMann
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PG Regional Development Corporation
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Patty Stewart
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Stewart Communications
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At this session, the content and theme for the rally were set and the speaker’s list developed. According to the minutes of the meeting, It was IWA President Frank Everitt who suggested one of the answers could be a local residency program for physicians, and it was Ben Meisner who asked if it would be realistic to expect to one day have medical education in the north at UNBC and CNC. UNBC President Dr. Charles Jago said there were discussions underway with UBC about collaborative education and noted there was a national “mood” to discuss such matters.
With just two days left, the core committee donated time, advertising and support to get as many people out as possible.
On the day of the rally, Ben Meisner recalls sitting in the audience waiting to see if there would be a decent turnout “I remember sitting there and there were only a few people in the seats. I had my head in my hands, thinking, we’ve laid an egg. Then, people started filling in from every where, and by the time the first speaker took to the stage, the place was packed.”
There were traffic line ups of two miles long as people streamed into the parking lot at the Multiplex. Mayor of the day, Colin Kinsley was emotional when he took the stage to speak, saying the show of support would give him the resolve to ensure something changed for the better.
Orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Michael Moran, then president of the Northern Medical Society, was also emotional when he addressed the crowd. Wiping away tears, he made a commitment to stay in the community.
It was Dr. Charles Jago who made the commitment to develop the Northern Medical Program, a made in the north solution, to the recruitment and retention problems.
The work then began to develop a Northern Medical Program with the belief that if physicians are trained in the north, they will stay in the north.
A group called the Prince George Citizens Health Group was formed and Mayor Colin Kinsley was the point person for that group. According to the minutes of the group’s meeting, the group’s goals were:
· To increase the number of nursing graduates from CNC/UNBC programs
· Establish a School of Medicine at UNBC
· Position PGRH as a teaching hospital
· Community advocacy for improvements to the delivery health care in the PGRH region to an equitable standard of care as stipulated in the Canada Health Act
Dr.Jago meantime had formed a joint committee between UBC and UNBC to explore the opportunity of developing a northern medical program. “I knew it was doable” says Dr. Jago, “ but it had to be done as a partnership, we couldn’t do it on our own. UNBC did not have the capacity, but it had the capacity to work with UBC, it had the capacity to build areas of strength that would enhance the UBC program. I had no desire at any point to be a parasite on the body of UBC, we were going to bring value, and we have, enormous value to the North and to the UBC Medical program.”
Ten years after that rally, the first graduates have just completed their residencies and are ready to make their career commitments.
The Northern Medical Program has become the model for rural medical training throughout North America. “People come from all over the world to look at what we’ve done here” says Dr. Jago “It is a source of enormous pride.”
Plenty has changed over the past ten years. There are more RN’s graduating, there is a Nurse Practitioner program, there has been expansion of the Licensed Practical Nurse programs, the Northern Medical Society has pushed for the development of a cancer centre, and a radiation technician program, both projects are under development. PGRH has become the University Hospital of Northern B.C. which means it is now a “teaching” hospital and that will bring with it future benefits.
Next week, on June 22nd, ten years after more than seven thousand people packed the Multiplex, there will be a recognition event at UNBC to say thank you to all who have made financial contributions over the years to support the Northern Medical Program Trust which provides funding to students in the program.
There would be no need for such a recognition event had it not been for a phone call on a Sunday morning in mid June, ten years ago.
The rest, as they say, is history.
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Posted by: whatintheheck on June 14 2010 6:25 AM
The Kelowna Cancer clinic opened in 1998. A clinic had been the hope of Prince George citizens before Kelowna was given the nod.
I wonder if that decision helped to influence the pressure build up to get better health care for the north.