STONIER-NEWMAN – Thank you to the caring – and despairing – seven OBGYNs

By LYNNE STONIER-NEWMAN
ArmchairMayor.ca Contributor

YOU HAVE BIRTHED our babies and grand-babies, nurtured mothers through the lengthy, and sometimes scary, pre-natal’s and post-natal’s many months a pregnancy and birth requires. And you’ve provided reliable and caring GYN services to so many women in our region.

When you came to Kamloops and our community’s Royal Inland Hospital, you expected and deserved respect and workable conditions for both your own and your patients’ needs and rights.

According to Maternity Matters, a large group of concerned Kamloops residents whose third rally was held on Jan 3, 2026, there has been no meaningful public response at all from the Ministry of Health to your valid concerns.

Similarly, Interior Health’s news releases have not, in my opinion, provided concrete answers about WHY the seven OBGYNs’ valid concerns have not being resolved. I find some IH releases spin doctoring instead of factual reporting to us.

For instance, one of IH’s news releases was: ” … will be replaced by IH massive campaigns to find OBGYNs.”

Is that responsible leadership? Does it value our region’s women’s maternity and medical needs? And does it imply a Canadian woman’s cultural and medical expectations and needs for her care during a pregnancy is the same as that OBGYNs provide for women worldwide?

And a long-term question, will those newly hired replacement doctors be resigning if they encounter the same problems that have caused these seven OBGYN’s resignations?

And how much are these IH campaigns and importing replacement doctors costing the taxpayers?

This excerpt from the letter below is signed by 130 OBGYN doctors from across B.C. Their concerns about the administrative disfunction and the ongoing devaluing of professional workplace needs demonstrate that action is needed now:

October 17, 2025
To: Sylvia Weir CEO, Interior Health
Josie Osborne, Minister of Health

We are writing in support of the Kamloops OBGYNs who have submitted their resignations. This decision reflects deep and ongoing concerns about maternity care, gynecology services, and women’s health in our regions.
These physicians have long advocated for better access to care in Kamloops, yet despite years of engagement, their calls for change have been ignored. Their collective resignation is a last resort, a step no physician takes lightly; however, are prompted by untenable and unsafe working conditions and the lack of meaningful response from the health authority and government.
We have also raised alarms about this looming maternity crisis, only to be similarly dismissed.
The consequences are now materializing: the loss of Kamloops as a key mid-sized maternity hub will have real and immediate impacts on patients.
Surgical wait times will grow as their patients still require surgery and will fall to other centres which are already at capacity, care for high-risk pregnancies will be disrupted, and existing providers – including those outside of Kamloops – will be stretched even further.
When OBGYNs are undervalued, so too are women and their health across B.C. ….
…. The provincial OBGYN community is small and closely connected. We are alarmed by the short-sighted reliance on locum physicians as stopgaps and the unrealistic plan to recruit 12 new OBGYNs to a community where current staff have been unsupported and exposed to unsafe working conditions. …

Interior Health and RIH administrators, how did you reply to those caring 130 OBGYN professionals?
And, more importantly, how have you attempted to resolve the RIH’s seven OBGYN’s issues and safety concerns?

So far, what you’ve offered in your news releases does not answer either of my questions. I find your press releases scanty and future-based. Assuring us you are planning for pregnant women’s future needs — maybe will initiate more group maternity care programs, probably with more glossy pamphlets and web sites — and are publicizing that anyone who needs maternity care can call into RIH to report. Just say “I’m coming in and about to deliver a baby…” Really?

A future mother’s needs as well as the father’s and caring families, are not a drop-in situation. There’s a story making the rounds of a first-time high-risk mother who was having twins and she was transferred to three hospitals and before being allowed to deliver! Yes, this actually happened — and doesn’t it demonstrate administrative mismanagement and obstetrical ignorance? …And just how much did that delivery cost IH?

As well, what are the risks and possible consequences of a birthing mother being sent in a private car or helicopter to another hospital many miles away? The complex OBGYN care B.C. doctors are trained to provide for pre-natal and post-natal mothers and babies mandates long-term relationships between patient and doctor.

Currently, is that care the primary concern? RIH’s and IH’s press releases about our region’s pregnant women’s options seem to be only offering stop-gap solutions, not long-term accessibility to quality care.

When the seven OBGYN’s resigning agreed to provide Kamloops and our region with their professional services, they bestowed their trust on Royal Inland Hospital’s and IH’s administration to provide respect, workable conditions and a professionally managed environment. In exchange, they would provide respect, care AND in a safe medical environment for their patients.

Why has RIH and IH not fulfilled those doctors’ contracts?

With all the medical staff shortages caused by our earlier B.C.  governments’ mismanagement, health administration isn’t an easy job. But … “Who IS making the decisions about what maternity entails?”

Secondly, “How is local user’s needs helping to shape the administrative decisions being made for us?”

Compared to earlier decades when Royal Inland Hospital had an elected board of directors, does the current RIH’s board of directors — appointed by the B.C. Government — have influence and do they report directly to us? Can we phone or email an RIH appointed director to share our concerns? How? Because that local input is what a public hospital requires.

When the former RIH board of directors were elected, each member received ongoing public input regularly and on a one-to-one basis. Now, does that happen? An annual report is token and not an adequate response to a community’s public concerns and questions.

To the seven OBGYNs resigning, I thank you for your bravery. My apologies that your valid concerns have not been publicly listened to and investigated.

By trying to awaken us to our future babies’ and their mothers’ medical risks and needs — and in having to recognize your own personal health concerns and reputation risks — you have cared enough to de-stabilize and sacrifice your professional and personal worlds.

I value that massive and historical sacrifice you seven have made — and will keep asking, “Why could not workable compromises be found? And how can seven OBGYNs’ services at RIH just be discarded?”

You seven medical professionals have awoken many of us to the scary reality that within the Interior Health’s vast domain of health and medical services’ control, women’s health and our future babies’ well-being is at risk.

I thank and salute you.

Lynne Stonier-Newman is a resident of Kamloops. She’s a social marketing and communication consultant, and a B.C. historian and author.