On-the-job consults end for health staff

Apractice once considered a professional courtesy of allowing medical staff working sick to snag a quick consultation with a doctor is no longer permitted, the manager of a Calgary urgent care clinic testified Monday at the provincial inquiry into queue jumping.

Don Christensen, area manager of the Sheldon Chumir Health Centre’s urgent care facility, located in Calgary’s inner city, told Justice John Vertes that he put an end to the practice in his facility this fall after urgent-care managers in the city were told by superiors at a September meeting to put a stop to it.

Until then, an urgent-care staff member who came to work with an ailment like a sore throat or injured ankle could make a patient chart, take it back to the doctor and have the doctor do a quick medical assessment.

The practice took the doctor out of service for a short period of time and allowed the employee to go back to work, Christensen said. But in the fall, the attitude toward the longstanding courtesy changed.

“It was no longer a professional courtesy, it was considered a form of queue jumping, and we were to cease and desist from this behaviour right away,” said Christensen, who started working in Alberta’s hospitals in 1979 as a staff nurse.

Christensen told the inquiry Monday that managers were asked to communicate the new policy with staff verbally. But he also issued a written directive on Oct. 11 after he heard some staff were still attempting to consult with a doctor while at work.

“My expectation is if you are sick enough to require physician attention while at work, then you are no l o nger able to function in the role of a staff member and you become a patient of the UCC (Urgent Care Clinic),” Christensen wrote. “You will wait your turn to be seen by one of the physicians.”

Vertes asked Christensen if urgent-care managers received any reason for why this professional courtesy became an issue in September.

“Public perception,” Christensen said.

“Did the public perception have something to do with the creation of this inquiry?” Vertes asked.

“I would say yes,” Chris-

It was considered a form of queue jumping DON CHRISTENSEN

tensen replied.

Christensen said that some patients would attempt to name drop or use professional connections to speed their path, or that of a loved one, to a doctor. But he said in his experience, such attempts are never successful, including doctors trying to walk their own sick child back to see a colleague, because triage nurses skilfully blocked such efforts.

He recalled a specific example of a doctor who worked both at the urgent-care clinic and at a private medical clinic that “was considered to be Cadillac medicine” where clients pay a premium to receive immediate care 24 hours a day.

At one point, about a year and a half ago, “this physician was working in the urgent-care and he had a couple of clients he told just to come into the urgent care, talk to triage, tell them just to send the patients back to him,” he said.

“Triage blocked that, so the preferential treatment did not happen even though the physician had requested it,”

Christensen said he has never heard about prominent people getting faster access to health-care services. He testified that his understanding was that VIPs were to be treated just like anyone else.