Editor:
(re: Birthing challenges at Wrinch, Interior News, Feb. 29).
A correction to this article is in order.
First of all babies continue to be delivered at Wrinch Memorial Hospital, in contrast to implications in your opening paragraph.
In fact one arrived just this past weekend, to our great delight.
Our effort to provide obstetrical services to our patients continues.
It is a service to which all of our physicians and nurses are committed.
The challenge for us comes, not from the renovations, as suggested in the article (in fact we made sure that the renovations did not affect our ability to deliver babies), but from the challenge to finding qualified nursing staff so that we can provide for save deliveries without gaps in service.
We in Hazelton are not alone in this.
In times past we have conducted deliveries here for both Smithers and Terrace hospitals when those hospitals were short staffed.
The efforts of Drs, Eckfeldt, Kim and Mawhorter in offering obstetrics in Hazelton are greatly appreciated.
So is the commitment to obstetrics of all of our medical staff, once it is possible to run our operating room and delivery room consistently on a 24-hour-a-day basis.
Some nurses are now training to allow us to do just that.
We are in a continuing search for nurses with obstetrical training to help us maintain an outstanding and safe service.
Peter Newbery,
MDiv, MD, FCFP
Medical Director
UCHSS, Hazelton