Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So following up with further questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services and picking up on some of the things I mentioned in my Member's statement. So my first question is do paramedics have adequate training to engage in the common primary care activities that are needed in small community health centres, such as pre- and post-natal care, chronic disease management, or, for example, recognizing when the symptoms in a stable patient might lead soon to a serious decline; do paramedics have the right training to address those things? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, paramedics are pretty great. They are very versatile. They have different levels, and depending on the levels that they have educated and they're certified through their regulatory body in another jurisdiction, they can do many things. However, within the review that has happened and highlighting that paramedics could be implemented, that work is ongoing. And where the Member talks about all of the primary care services, that is the area that, you know, the nurses would be focused on. That is in their scope of practice. So whatever the scope of practice that they are able to do under the training that they have, that is what will be reviewed and analyzed, whether it's a good fit into implementing that type of a service and how well it could fit into the small communities. So that work is ongoing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And so the Minister has referred a couple times to the scope of practice of paramedics versus community health nurses; however, my question is, is there any recognized scope of practice for particular levels of paramedics in the NWT given that we don't have a regulatory body and these paramedics may have been trained in any number of different provinces with different scopes of practice? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when hiring certified paramedics into the past work and the ongoing work, we have many, many services that we provide in the Northwest Territories that do not currently have a regulatory body, like respiratory therapists who manage patient airways in the Northwest Territories, lab technologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, imaging techs, x-ray techs. There's many, many -- mental health addiction, like, counsellors. They work within what their jurisdiction of their licensing is, and so within the -- as long as they're in good standing, then, you know, we can -- we write the job description or the -- what is it -- the employer has a scope of practice that they are eligible to work on under their current -- whatever level of certification that they do have through a licensing body in another jurisdiction. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So in terms of the need for paramedics, we heard earlier today about some of the successes of the health recruitment unit. Does the Minister believe that the health recruitment efforts will allow us to close the gap in terms of recruitment of community health nurses to be able to fill the current vacancies? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I could only hope that, you know, we'd have tons of nurses that are going to go out that are going to go and take expanded scope and want to work in a health centre and live there. Yes, I wish that would happen; however, you know, I think the change in our workforce is different. We used to be able to even do job shares for 6 and 12 weeks, up to 12-week job shares in some of our communities. And now with the level that the nurses are willing to agree to, it might be 6 weeks, it might be 4 weeks. And so the change in the way that they want to work -- you know, we can continue to recruit, and we -- you know, wherever we can put them into places. There are some that are signing on and are staying. You know, we have local nurses that are going back home, which is really exciting, into small communities. However, we still have a lot of work to do. And we know what we've heard from them is that they need more supports. They need to be able to focus on some of the things to do their expanded scope whereas that's why we're looking at implementing other, like, LPNs into the smaller communities so that they can pick up a lot of the other -- and work at their scope of practice. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Frame Lake.
