Walk-in clinic on wheels brings health care to western Manitoba First Nations

Posted on October 23, 2024 by Peggy

For the past decade, an RV-turned-clinic has travelled about 1,500 kilometres a week, with a nurse and nurse practitioner on board to bring health-care services to four western Manitoba First Nations.

Andrea Eashappie says she frequently visits when the mobile clinic, operated by Prairie Mountain Health, is parked outside her office in Birdtail Sioux First Nation.

“I think it’s a great benefit.… I come once a month, my family members, my husband come once a month,” said Eashappie, who lives with diabetes.

“It’s hard to get into the local clinics around here. Even the ER … you’d sit there for a long time,” but the mobile clinic is “right here in the community,” she said.

The regional health authority’s mobile clinic is on the road Monday to Friday, visiting the Birdtail, Ebb and Flow, O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi and Keeseekoowenin Ojibway First Nations.

The nurse practitioner and primary care nurse, who travel with a driver, see around 25 patients each day.

Nurse practitioner Michelle Weighell says the retrofitted RV essentially acts as a walk-in clinic on wheels. There are offices with exam tables on either end and storage in the middle, with as much equipment and supplies as they can fit in.

A woman stands in a medical clinic. — Nurse practitioner Michelle Weighell visits Birdtail Sioux First Nation every Monday with the mobile clinic. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)

The clinic lets patients get checkups, diagnostic tests, immunizations, sexually transmitted illness testing, referrals and neonatal care, without having to travel, she said.

There’s often a line of people when the mobile clinic pulls up in a community. The staff try to get everyone scheduled for the day, and Weighell also follows up on a list of people she knows need some extra attention.

“It just fills that gap,” she said. “[We] try to prevent more severe illness or lessen the chronicity of their disease.”

Tanya Douglas, a Prairie Mountain Health nurse who has been rolling with the clinic for nine years, says it’s a consistent presence in the community, so patients know and trust it as a regular health provider.

A woman sits in a medical clinic. — Primary care nurse Tanya Douglas has been rolling with mobile clinic for nine years. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)

In rural areas of the province, many communities lack health-care services, she said, forcing people to make long drives to get to the nearest hospital or clinic.

“We’re expanding what is available to them right in their communities … [and] eliminating some of the barriers that they might have, which often can be transportation,” Douglas said. “We’re bringing it basically right to their doorstep.”

Many First Nations people in Manitoba have to travel to urban centres to get health care, while suffering disproportionately from a variety of health issues.

As of 2016, life expectancy for First Nations people was 72 for women and 68 for men, compared with averages of nearly 83 for other women and 79 for other men in Manitoba, according to a 2022 provincial report on health in Manitoba.

Weighell says she’s the primary caregiver for several people in Birdtail. She’s treated some patients who hadn’t seen a physician or nurse practitioner in decades before they connected with the mobile clinic.

Filling care gaps

Birdtail Sioux Health Centre director Evelyn Pratt says the mobile clinic’s nurse practitioner is the only one serving the First Nation, and there’s no doctor in the community. The health centre can help with some things, including some nursing, but there are still care gaps.

Right now, the health centre has two vacant nurse positions, which creates added pressures and workloads for the current staff, said Pratt.

A woman stands in a hallway. — Birdtail Sioux Health Centre director Evelyn Pratt says the mobile clinic provides care that isn’t available in the rural community. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)

Rural health care has suffered a lot over the years due to the closures of clinics and hospitals and struggles with recruitment, says Hanna Matiowsky, who has been a community public health nurse in Birdtail for almost 17 years.

That can mean months-long waits to see a doctor at a clinic near Birdtail, but “they can just come to the mobile,” Matiowsky said.

“It helps me by just not having to send people away from the community, and they always say people do better when they get treated in their own community.”

Eashappie said she has made the nearly 150-kilometre drive from Birdtail to Brandon to get help, only to come back home after waiting hours and not seeing someone.

She worries less now, because she knows the mobile clinic will be in Birdtail every Monday. Her only complaint is she wishes they would come to the community twice a week.

“It’s a great benefit for everybody,” she said. “It does save a lot of time to travel.”