At the north end of Second Street, along First Avenue N.E., stands a stately brick structure constructed at the time of the Korean War, and opened in 1952 as the Weyburn Union Hospital.
The 110-bed facility served a need at the time with all medical services provided, other than some specialized sort of needs.
In those days, medical care was different, and the facility itself was run by a local hospital board; today, it's one of many health care facilities in the Sun Country Health Region, and medical care today has a different emphasis, one that is more patient-centred and is geared towards preventative, pro-active care.
There is also a need today to be more sensitive to such issues as privacy, and keeping a tight rein on infection control.
For these, and many, many other reasons, that stately brick structure now known as the Weyburn General Hospital is no longer adequate to serving the needs of Weyburn and area residents and is need of replacement.
As Marga Cugnet, the interim CEO of Sun Country Health Region, said in a recent interview, the hospital was built according to the needs of the health care system in the 1950s, but the facility does not help with the provision of health care today in 2010.
The problems with the Weyburn hospital can be boiled down to a few concepts, which in medical terms present huge problems: 1. there is absolutely no space, and most departments or services are crowded in to whatever is available; 2. there is no privacy in many areas, including in the Emergency Room and the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), as well as in the patient ward areas where there are four-bed wards sharing one bathroom with other four-bed wards; 3. the infrastructure is old and is falling apart in many areas.
This descriptive list of problems only scratches the surface of what the hospital's situation is, and they all lead to one conclusion: Weyburn needs a new acute-care hospital, sooner rather than later. Please, give your support to the Weyburn Hospital Foundation.
