Nurse studying how travel for treatment affects Island families

Accessing health care in a rural setting like P.E.I. comes with a set of challenges, including having to travel off-Island to seek care for many conditions and health events.

Sometimes it's just for appointments, but the stays can be longer if someone is in the ICU, critically ill or recovering from a severe trauma or injury.

Margie Burns, a P.E.I. nurse and academic, has been an ICU nurse for 20 years, working on the Island, in Halifax and Scotland.

Now, she's conducting PhD research on Island families who have to travel out of province to support and care for loved ones being treated at larger hospitals.

"I always wondered what was it like for them to be going through this and what the future held," she said.

'Long-term consequences'

Burns is looking at the impact being so far from home has on families and caretakers at such a stressful time.

For her study, the definition of rural is any time you have to travel three hours or more to a large urban care centre, which means the whole Island falls into the category.

"People who suffer a head injury or a bleed in the brain or certain types of traumas, certain types of heart attacks, spinal cord injuries and those type of specialty service areas, Islanders have to travel to Halifax or Moncton," she said.

"From my experience from ICU here at the QEH, I'm thinking between 50 to 200 patients have to travel off-Island per year for this."

Burns said her study is looking at the experiences with the goal of finding ways nurses and primary care workers can better intervene to lower rates of anxiety, PTSD and depression.

"We're learning more and more about the family's experience and how they can have long-term consequences from experiencing this critical illness in a loved one," she said.

Family support?

If people can go off-Island for treatment of a family member, some take a relative with them for support — but Burns said that doesn't always happen.

"If they do travel on their own, all of the burden falls on them, [including] being responsible for all the decision-making," she said.

Burns said for her study, she is meeting with people and having a general conversation about what they went through.

"It's really just a sit-down conversation where they just share their experience," she said, adding the process takes about 45 minutes to an hour.

"I do find family members want to talk about what it's like for the patient sometimes, but it's really all about the family's experience," she said.

Burns said she is hoping to get more men to participate in the study. She said 90 per cent of participants have been women so far.

Burns said she can be reached on her Twitter, Facebook or Instagram accounts.

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