A year after Prince Albert’s lone child psychiatrist left, Saskatchewan’s gateway city is still left with a void in critical mental health care.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) is working to fill two full-time youth psychiatry positions in Prince Albert.
In March, the SHA hired a youth psychiatrist part-time, allowing for two short-term beds in the hospital’s Child and Youth Psychiatric Unit. The unit has a 10-bed capacity.
“There’s going to be so many puzzle pieces needed to get things functioning to what we were used to before that unit closed,” said Dr. Tamara Hinz, a child psychiatrist in Saskatoon.
The issue dates back to the death of a long-time psychiatrist in 2019, coupled with another psychiatrist leaving the city around the same time.
The inpatient unit was closed until the SHA recruited Dr. Randy Zbuk.
Having one full-time youth psychiatrist allowed the unit to re-open at half capacity – but it didn’t last long. After 18 months, Zbuk moved on.
At the time, he told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix that he was “grossly under-resourced” with no coverage to take time off and a lack of full-time nurses to assist him.
“It’s not just a one and done kind of situation. You really need to do careful coordination and really aggressive recruitment so that you can make sure you have that critical mass,” said Hinz.
“I don’t think that, historically, our health authority or government have really recognized that – that they kind of put one person in a position and feel like it’s sort of mission accomplished.”
While they await recruitment, the SHA said it “continues to provide residents of Prince Albert with timely and appropriate mental health care through temporary measures and collaboration across the province.”
According to the statement, the city’s adult psychiatry team is helping with urgent youth cases. Other inpatient units, primarily Saskatoon, are supporting people from the north in need of youth mental health care.
Hinz said, at times, half of the inpatient unit in Saskatoon is filled with children who would have been admitted in Prince Albert.
“It definitely affects our capacity, so we have more kids who are waiting in emergency for a bed or who maybe are admitted, but are discharged home because of a lack of beds.”
Hinz said she and her colleagues are also feeling the impacts of a shortage of adult psychiatrists in Prince Albert. She said there are multiple days a month where there’s no adult psychiatrist on call.
“Even in Saskatoon, our wait list is atrocious. Kids are waiting up to two years to be seen for an outpatient assessment, which is just completely absurd,” she said.
“In a child’s life, you’re talking about one to two school years, for instance, that are really impacted if they have something like ADHD or depression that is going untreated.”
Hinz said psychiatrists are in high demand across Canada and the United States.
In order to recruit sustainable psychiatrists to Prince Albert, she speculated that the SHA would likely need to offer a higher pay.
“I think that there’s a balance between treating all jurisdictions fairly, but there needs to be this recognition that in places where there is a really critical need, we need to do more to incentivise people to work there.”
New infrastructure ‘not the most important step’
The expansion of the Victoria Hospital includes the replacement of the existing adult mental health unit. However, Hinz said that doesn’t necessarily mean that psychiatrists will want to work in the city or stay for the long run.
“What we’ve seen with the children’s hospital in Saskatoon is that it’s not necessarily a ‘Build it and they will come’ type of situation,” she said.
“It’s perhaps one step, but definitely not the most important step.”
Hinz said Saskatoon has a shortage of pediatric specialists. The Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital opened in 2019.
At a ground breaking for the expanded Victoria Hospital’s parking lot, Mayor Greg Dionne said the improved facility will attract families to Prince Albert.
“There’s going to be 500 new employees in this facility and these are careers, they’re not jobs. These people are going to be able to buy houses, cars, and that’s what excites us,” he said last week.
Dionne referred to the construction of new apartment buildings and duplexes near the hospital. He said some are already filled with nurses who were hired for the new neonatal intensive care unit, which opened last year.
