Merritt residents begin protests amid emergency department shutdowns

MERRITT – With the emergency department at the Nicola Valley Hospital still suffering closures, Merritt residents are trying to take action into their own hands.

“If they think they are going to keep closing this, we are just going to get louder and more organized, this is just the beginning,” said Georgia Clement, one of the organizers of the hospital protest. “If they think they are going to shut little old Merritt down, they have come to the wrong town.”

The first protest, of many to come, was planned and held at the Nicola Valley Hospital on Sunday with the emergency department coincidentally being shutdown that day as well.

“We are protesting the fact that first of all the ER is closed, secondly, that the constant excuse that we get from Interior Health Authority (IHA) is that there is a staffing problem,” said Clement. “About a month ago we became aware of a local resident who is a general surgeon practicing in the Lower Mainland and he had offered to use his services to work here in the emergency room (ER) to fill some of these shifts because he lives in the community and he’s concerned about this situation. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC told him ‘yes he could go ahead and do these shifts’ and IHA for whatever their reasons were at the time they said no. We have learned recently that their reasoning is that he hasn’t practiced as a general practitioner for many years, so even though he’s a general surgeon working in emergency situations down on the coast, they [IHA] are still telling him that they feel he is under qualified.”

The general surgeon Clement is referencing is Dr. Robert Granger, who is a Merritt-based trauma surgeon who is wanting to help keep the ER open.

“Dr. Granger is willing to help, he is actually here in the city today [Sunday], he could have helped.”

According to Clement, it’s not just the fact that Dr. Granger won’t get approved to work in the hospital, but the fact that there is nursing shortages as well.

“I have talked to two people who know Licensed Practical Nurses (LPN) who have applied to work at this hospital and they have been denied by IHA so for whatever there reasons are. I don’t know how many nurses are in the Lower Mainland, but I’m sure they could have gotten one of them up here today to work. They denied the nurse practitioner in town hospital privilege’s for what we have just been told too, she is not allowed to use her skills in this emergency ward or in the hospital, so something is terribly wrong with IHA.”

Clement provided examples on why the emergency department is crucial for the Nicola Valley Hospital.

“Right now there’s a baseball tournament about half a mile down from here at the ER and if one of those kids’ were to get hit in the head, now they got to drive another hour away from our city to get help. We have three highways coming into our town many of the people coming into our area are on high risk jobs driving heavy equipment. Sometimes those are life or death time frames and somebody is going to die here and then the blood is on IHA, that’s where the blood is going to be on because they are the ones that created the problem here. People depend on their hospitals they depend on their emergency boards.”

With Sunday marking the tenth closure of the emergency department in Merritt of 2023, compared to eight of all of 2022, residents are calling for more action to be taken.

“The CEO of IHA makes $441,000 a year and she needs to pay some attention to what’s going on here in Merritt.”