Former pediatrics head at Kelowna hospital says calls for changes were ignored by IH
When Dr. Kate Runkle was head of the pediatrics department at Kelowna General Hospital (KGH) between 2019 and 2021, she says she constantly pushed for changes to the pediatric staffing and service model.
'I did presentations at the highest levels that I could to advocate change,' Runkle told Global News.
However, Runkle says those calls for changes to Interior Health (IH) administration continually fell on deaf ears.
'It was like screaming underwater, like we just didn't get anywhere,' Runkle said.
The unsuccessful pleas from pediatricians working at the hospital started in 2019.
Feeling unheard and devalued for several years, according to Runkle, pediatricians began to resign.
In 2023 alone, seven pediatricians handed in their resignations. Runkle was one of them.
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'At a certain point, it just became unsafe,' Runkle said. 'I use the analogy of working at a construction site and if you are alerting your staff and your boss about unsafe work conditions over and over again and you're not being heard — I mean, you would quit. You would go somewhere else.'
The unsafe conditions Runkle is referring to is the physical layout of the five different areas that all too often, a single pediatrician has to provide coverage in.
'In simplest terms, imagine you are working in a space that is five separate areas,' she said. 'These areas are physically in different buildings in the hospital. They're on different floors. They're physically separated from each other, and in each of those spaces, is the potential for a critically-ill child or newborn.'
Those spaces include labour and delivery, the pediatrics unit, neonatal intensive care unit, the emergency department and the adult ICU, where critically-ill children are placed given the lack of a pediatric ICU at KGH.
Runkle says being in different areas at once is impossible, prompting physicians to make very difficult decisions on which child will receive their limited care.
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'Not only does there need to be a complete shift in the way that we provide service at Kelowna General Hospital, but in a way that the administration responds to our concerns before we can move forward,' she said.
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While the resignations did cause occasional disruptions of pediatric services, on May 26, they resulted in the closure of the entire pediatric ward for at least six weeks.
IH has said the decision was a difficult one to make but necessary to protect pediatric coverage for critical services, such as high-risk deliveries.
Among the changes that pediatricians have long called for is a staffing model that has at least two pediatricians on shift 24/7.
'We started advocating for double coverage. We actually voluntarily split ourselves in half in 2015 to allow for two people on during the day to cover both the neonatal side and the pediatric side in the hospital. So we did that on our own volition,' Runkle said. 'We started advocating to completely split the services for 24 hours a day, starting in 2019.'
Instead of looking back internally at how the situation was managed and why those concerns expressed by doctors weren't taken seriously, both B.C.'s health minister, Josie Osborne, and IH CEO Susan Brown have repeatedly blamed the crisis on the current global doctor shortage.
'In a time of a global shortage of physicians and a shortage of pediatricians….they have made a difficult decision to close the pediatric facility,' Osborne said at a unrelated news conference on May 22 when asked about the situation by Global News.
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Brown also continues to blame the crisis on the COVID-19 pandemic.
'In 2019, some of the pediatric doctors came forward with some concerns about some resources they wanted to see and some planning started but then of course the pandemic came into play,' Brown told Global News in a Zoom interview on June 5.
2:09
Interior Health executive compensation despite ongoing issues at KGH
Brown is set to retire in December.
The B.C. Conservatives have called on her resignation to fast-track a leadership transition to get a new CEO in place sooner to tackle the crisis.
Brown, however, continues to be backed by Osborne and the chair of the IH board of directors, Dr. Robert Halpenny.
In an email to Global News on Wednesday, IH stated one new pediatrician is slated to start working at the hospital this summer with two more expected to join in September.
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But as Kelowna's population grows, so does the number of pediatric patients and complex medical cases, which will require a lot more resources and a bolstered delivery model to meet the growing needs.
'That's been one of the biggest challenges for us on the ground, is that there are just more kids in Kelowna, and therefore more kids who are getting severely, severely sick,' Runkle said. 'We are not keeping up.'
As IH looks ahead at a leadership transition with Brown's end-of-year retirement, Runkle and her colleagues hope whoever takes over makes pediatric care in Kelowna a priority.
'There needs to be a champion within the administration who is making a long term plan for pediatric service delivery in Kelowna…that includes vision for the future,' Runkle said.
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