THE RECORD

January 24, 1996

BACK TO THE EGG

Suzanne Trevis

On November 8, 1966 the following public announcement appeared in the Upper Islander.

A trailer to serve as the temporary medical clinic has been set up adjacent to the Municipal Office and TD Bank. A Doctor from the offices of Murphy, Hancock, Ross, Duncan & Marget will visit every Wednesday afternoon from 1pm - 4 pm.

Effective January 3, 1967 Dr. Norman Rivers will take up permanent residence and commence practice. He will be located in the medical clinic trailer until space is available in the town centre. Dr. Rivers, presently on staff at Shaughnessy Hospital, will be associate of Murphy, Hancock, Ross, Duncan & Marget.

For emergency assistance at any time call the fire department. Ambulance is expected December 1, 1966.

I can vaguely remember Dr. Rivers. He made house calls, if you can believe that. And I can sort of remember the office in the plaza although it closed in 1972 when the new clinic opened.

There were very few extra services in the beginning. The rural doctor with his little black bag was a major plus! In fact my memories of fire department/ambulance attendants are a lot clearer as accidents in my family always seemed to take place on weekends and holidays. On more than one occasion Dave Cornish or Twiggy attended to bandage limbs, check for broken bones, or remove (ugh) fish hooks from little brothers. Even the clinic when it first opened had few of the amenities we enjoy today

We have achieved a lot in the last decade. In equipment alone we have managed to acquire a new state-of-the-art XRay machine, the burn bath, trauma stretchers, and a new ECG unit which will give provisional diagnosis. A blood pressure machine that also tracks respiration, oxygen levels and cardiac rhythms and has a battery pack so as to travel in the ambulance or helicopter if necessary. We now have timpanic thermometers (checks temperature in ear canal), IV machines, a Holter Monitor, worn by the patient for 24 hours to check heart rhythms, and more than $100,000 worth of lab and hematology equipment enabling clinic staff to do more testing in town.

In addition we now have local physiotherapists, drug, alcohol and mental health counseling, speech therapists, blood pressure clinics & well women's clinics. The nurses and staff at the clinic do more follow up care than ever before, helping people to come home sooner from hospital, or in some cases avoid hospital altogether. We now have palliative care, enabling terminally ill patients to come home and spend their time with family and friends.

Not bad for a community as small as ours. And most of us take it for granted. It is not a "right". For a long time we had to travel out of our community to access these facilities and programs. And if not for the hard work and dedication of a small number of people we would still be doing just that. The clinic staff and board of directors have done a lot for this community that for the most part goes unnoticed. We see the results and take advantage of their accomplishment without ever really stopping to wonder how it came to be. There have been a lot of things happening at our clinic lately and I think now, more than ever, we have to recognize what these people have given of themselves and what they brought to our community to make Gold River, specifically our health care system, what it is today.

Outside of our community our health clinic is seen as one of the best in the province, don't you think it's past time we saw it as well?