Wait Times for Pediatrics

Wait times in health care can simply mean to the time it takes for a patient to get treated in the particular hospital and more specifically at emergency rooms. Waiting times in hospitals is a key concern to patients and other health care stakeholders. Most health facilities are aware of this concern and are constantly trying to improve on wait times. This discussion will focus specifically on wait times for pediatrics in Canada. Just like in most countries, Canada faces the challenge of wait times in health care. This situation cuts across patients of all ages, sex, and races even though there might be small variation relating to the same. Children have not been spared either in this situation since there is high level of health care sought for children. This is because childhood stage requires many health care services in order to ensure that the growth and development among children is enhanced and sustained. In addition, considering the fragile nature of the health of children brought about by less developed immunity system, there is need for prompt and adequate health care to be offered to them. According to Davidson (2010), available data on the wait time and access of pediatric services in Canada suggest that child health needs are often largely unmet. The wait times are high in most of the children’s health aspects such as on surgery, mental illnesses, diagnostic imaging and cancer care among other health conditions. As a result of too much time on wait lists for the children, the possibility of their health to be affected negatively and their lives in general being affected is highly increased. Even though there is an assumption that children receive care in health facilities on a priority basis, most of them wait for services for certain duration, long or short. As Warnock (2005) notes, prolonged wait for care is common in most of health care systems which are publicly funded. He further notes that, in the light of this challenge, the Canadian Government made reducing wait times a priority through various ways, most notably the 10- Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care of 2004. This issue is important to health care in Canada as it will help understand the problem, how it affects the children and society at large and the appropriate management of the problem to ensure quality health care for children. The thesis statement for the coursework is: Wait times for pediatrics in Canada are still a major challenge.