A women’s clinic is now up and running out of the Lakeland Primary Care Network, which will expand services and give women better access to health care, not just in St. Paul, but across the Lakeland.
Monica Joly, RN and director of Clinical Services with the Lakeland PCN, said when local ob-gyn Dr. Akindele first said she was leaving the community of St. Paul, the PCN asked her to stay to help set up a women’s clinic.
The idea, explained Joly, was to have nurses, with doctors’ oversight, help women with gynecological services such as PAP care, sexually-transmitted infection screenings, post-partum education, pessary treatment and more.
“We want to travel with this clinic because there’s other rural communities in need of this kind of service,” she said, pointing to other communities such as Glendon, Elk Point, Smoky Lake, Lac La Biche and others that lie within the PCN boundary. Not every woman has a family doctor, and some women may prefer to see a female, rather than a male doctor as well, for their gynecological needs, she explained.
“Everybody’s very excited,” she said, adding the women’s clinic will be staffed by three RNs, as well as a dietician, a social worker and a diabetic educator to make referrals as necessary and offer multi-disciplinary care.
During her work with the PCN to set up the clinic, Dr. Akindele decided she would stay to help meet needs in the local area. She will be working alongside the nurses at the PCN to provide care, oversight and referrals as needed, while also looking after pre-natal patients at the Living Hope Medical Clinic.
“For expecting women, they have many more options now,” she said, noting pregnant women now have a choice of seeing her as an ob-gyn or their family doctor for pre-natal care.
Akindele gave a lot of credit to the Primary Care Network, saying it is doing the job it is supposed to be doing in working for the benefit of the community. “I think they should be commended – the women in the community may not know how much they’ve done, but they’ve done it.”
To reach the women’s clinic, for obstetrical or gynecological services, people can call 780-645-1190 or reach it by fax at 780-645-1166.
