Pellerin: New medical dispatch system should serve francophones better

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Big news this week with the coming into force of the much improved Medical Priority Dispatch System that will modernize how dispatchers handle 911 calls. It’s great but I wish it included official language of choice as a criterion when sending patients to the care that’s right for them.

The new service, MPDS for short, will enable dispatchers to more effectively triage people who call for help according to the gravity and urgency of their condition. In the before times, a less-detailed protocol resulted in the vast majority of calls being assigned a high priority even though few actually were urgent or serious enough to justify that status. That, in turn, put pressure on first responders such as paramedics, who might then end up taking more time to get to a genuinely urgent call than they would have if it had been flagged as a top priority to start with.

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The new system will sort calls into five categories: immediate life-threatening; emergent and potentially life-threatening; urgent and potentially life-threatening; not urgent but potentially serious; and not urgent and not serious.

There were rumours that language preference would be a specific criterion in the dispatching of patients. As Pierre Poirier, chief of Ottawa Paramedic Service, said when I asked, the new system “will continue to reflect the provincial standards which consider the acuity and appropriate receiving facility in determining the receiving hospital, as well as the mitigation tools detailed in the (city) Council report, seeking to address level zero and capacity concerns. Currently, patient preferences cannot be considered at this time given the significant pressures/challenges in the health care system.”

Obviously, level zero — when there are no ambulances available to respond to 911 calls, due to overwhelming demand — are more urgent to solve than concerns about language preferences. And even when we’re not at level zero, I’m conscious that other people’s legitimate needs matter, too. If my request for care in French happens at a time when Montfort Hospital is overrun with patients, I shouldn’t clutter up the Montfort’s ER if I can be taken care of elsewhere.

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Nobody is saying language preference should be treated like a life-threatening situation. But it should be a criterion — not a guarantee, a criterion. I hardly think that’s asking too much, in the capital city of a country with two official languages. In fact it’s such a basic point that I almost feel my brain cells trying to escape my head to avoid having to argue it.

I was just in Paris with my eldest and at one point we got on the métro at Château d’Eau after some thrifting on Rue des Petites Écuries (worth the considerable detour, says the teen) and we came upon the scene of a nasty incident.

A man had fallen on the stairs and was being helped by paramedics. There was a lot of blood and they were struggling to stabilize him. They kept telling him, in that slow and authoritative voice first responders have, to please stop moving, we’re here to look after you. He kept trying to get up anyway.

In the heart of Paris, you can assume people understand French. Yet this person was visibly having trouble processing simple instructions. When we’re in the middle of a medical emergency, we are not at our best. I don’t care how bilingual you think you are, being able to receive care in your language makes a huge difference.

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English-speaking Quebecers have a right to receive health and social services in their language. The legal education website Éducaloi has a map showing institutions where such services are available: more than 60 throughout the province. I confess I was pleasantly surprised by how many there are.

Poirier stresses that Ottawa 911 dispatch officers are all bilingual. I have no doubt they are doing the best they can with the resources they have. My beef is not with them, but with successive governments that have starved the public health system to the point where we have so many level-zero events that we can’t even have it as written policy that language preference will be considered whenever possible.

Nous méritons mieux.

Brigitte Pellerin (they/them) is an Ottawa writer.

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