Thank you for that fantastic question.
In Quebec, we have local community service centres, called CLSC. They are wonderful places, which offer excellent home care. They have nurses, occupational therapists and physiotherapists on staff. Every category of health professionals is represented, apart from doctors. It's absurd, I know.
For purely political reasons, and probably union-related ones, for 35 years now, doctors have not been included in this exemplary multidisciplinary health care model which is the CLSC. However, in the case of palliative care, we can't offer it without doctors. I am not talking about a person's last seven days on earth, but rather of palliative care, which is comforting care given during the last year of life, as I stated earlier.
For example, let's say we have a person who suffers from heart failure, which patients, who frequently find themselves choking, sometimes call “water on the lungs.“ The medication dosage has to be changed constantly, whether administered intravenously or orally. We change the dosage from one day to the next, and sometimes twice a day. It can be done over the telephone, or during one of our visits, so that we make sure that the patient enjoys a good quality of life and does not choke.
What can our wonderful home care nurses do...