The Charlottetown resident tested positive for the coronavirus shortly before the July 1 holiday weekend, and within days of her illness, she began wheezing and unable to breathe.
When she arrived by ambulance at Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in Charlottetown – PEI’s largest hospital – paramedics had planned to move her to a back room as she was sick with COVID-19. But there was no room. So she was told to sit in the main waiting room. It was full of people.
PEI resident Berni Wood was shocked when she was recently admitted to an ER with sick patients struggling to breathe with COVID-19. She was told the wait would be up to 20 hours or more. Photo submitted.
He sat next to a woman who thought she had had a stroke. Nearby was a man with chest pains.
“I’m sitting with all these people knowing that I’m positive for COVID and that was really concerning,” she said.
After three hours, Wood asked a nurse how much longer he would have to wait.
“I was quickly told that the wait would probably be 16 to 20 hours or more.”
Wood left the ER and called a pharmacist, who was able to prescribe an inhaler to help her breathe.
Wood is just one of millions of Canadians facing fewer and fewer options for medical care, thanks to health care staffing shortages across Canada that have led to a cascade of ER closings, prolonged wait times and even several patient deaths . awaiting medical attention.
Queen Elizabeth Hospital Emergency Department in Charlottetown, PEI Global News
At least 15 percent of PEI residents don’t have a family doctor, according to Health PEI data, and when they get sick they often struggle to access clinics because they fill up within minutes of opening. They have no choice but to go to the emergency room and wait several hours, whether their medical needs are urgent or not.
The problem has been exacerbated by the periodic closings and reduced hours of some of the province’s smaller rural emergency departments.
Western Hospital’s Collaborative Emergency Centre, an overnight urgent care center in western PEI, located approximately 125 kilometers from Charlottetown, closed earlier this month for the remainder of August due to a lack of available staff.
Health worker shortages have also closed the emergency room at Western Hospital several times this summer, most often over the weekend, leaving the thousands of people who live west of Summerside with no choice but to drive to Summerside or Charlottetown if they need urgent medical care or hope. an ambulance is staffed and available to respond.
Western Hospital in Alberton, PEI Global News
Jason Woodbury, president of the union representing paramedics in PEI, says call volume has increased after Western’s frequent ER closures and long-term urgent care center closures.
This puts additional pressure on ground ambulance services which are “already in critical condition”, Woodbury said.
“It’s not uncommon for vehicles to be left unmanned,” he said. “We are facing our own staffing crisis within our organization.”
Patients now face longer wait times when they call 911 in western PEI — a situation that has a domino effect on the larger hospitals in Charlottetown and Summerside that now have to accept diversion patients, Woodbury said.
In July, the QEH was forced to activate Code Orange protocols – usually triggered after a major disaster or unexpected patient influx – after a one-car crash involving just four people due to the large number of patients already in the emergency department of hospital incidents in I ora.
Health PEI CEO Dr. Michael Gardam says the health authority has been forced to prioritize the province’s three largest emergency departments.
Health PEI CEO Dr. Michael Gardam. Photo submitted.
“Like every health care system in Canada, we’ve struggled with staffing this summer,” he said.
“In cases where we simply cannot find staff to work at Western, we are not going to transfer staff from our larger centers because it makes more sense to ensure that those larger centers are still operating.”
To keep the urban centers operating, the province also recently withdrew a financial incentive previously offered to doctors covering shifts at Western Hospital.
With only a limited number of emergency doctors in the province, it didn’t make sense to give bonuses to doctors to leave a busier emergency department in the city for the smaller emergency department on the island, Gardam said.
He noted that this was a program introduced by the provincial government, not PEI Health
“I don’t want to incentivize people to work in a place where, population-wise, we need them the least,” Gardam said.
Read more: Health workers to PMs: find solutions to ‘crisis’, don’t just ask Ottawa for funds
Staff shortages are widespread
The situation in PEI is not unique. Health care staffing shortages are plaguing emergency departments in small, rural hospitals from coast to coast, causing temporary ER closures and reduced services across Canada. Repeated emergency room closures in Clearwater, BC, this year prompted the community’s mayor, Merlin Blackwell, to publicly express concerns for the health and safety of its residents. But the local hospital was just one of small, rural ERs in BC to experience temporary closures and diversions, including those in Oliver, Port Hardy, Port MacNeill and Ashcroft. Two heart attack patients in Ashcroft have died in the past month while waiting for ambulances. In at least one of those cases, the temporary closure of the local ER played a role in the delayed ambulance response. In New Brunswick, three patients died in three different emergency departments in the past month and a half.
Read more: Ashcroft, Sr. BC dies while waiting for the ambulance
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In July, six emergency rooms, including one in Montreal, were temporarily closed in Quebec. At least three were closed in New Brunswick. 14 Ontario hospitals closed ERs, beds and ICU units. and a third of Manitoba’s rural areas closed due to staff shortages. There were also ER and bed closings and service reductions in many cities and towns in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and all three regions experienced disruptions to emergency health services. The guilty? Burnout and heavy workloads are leading many health care workers to cut back on hours, retire early or simply quit, says the Canadian Medical Association. Nurses and doctors, exhausted after two nonstop years of working through a public health emergency, are now treating patients who delayed medical care during pandemic restrictions and are now sicker. This means there are more seriously ill patients who need more care, but fewer people to care for them, as health workers continue to leave or downsize their jobs.
Read more: Health workers face burnout, even as COVID levels ease (June 5, 2022)
Perth and Smiths Falls Regional Hospital, located an hour outside of Ottawa, is one of several smaller hospitals affected by the staffing crisis. The emergency department there remained closed for three weeks earlier this summer after cases of COVID-19 among ER staff led to critical staff shortages. But the pandemic is only part of the problem. Michael Cohen, the hospital’s president and CEO, says that for many months before the recent closing, the hospital was losing nurses and was unable to hire enough people to replace them. Perth Hospital Emergency Entrance. Kingston World In some cases, nurses left their hospital jobs to take lower-paying jobs in the community, Cohen said. The only reason the Perth hospital was able to reopen in late July is that it hired temporary nurses through a private agency at significant additional cost to the hospital. But Cohen says this is only a “temporary gap.” Most office nurses only came to Perth temporarily and live in areas far outside the Perth area such as Toronto, Oakville and Mississauga. “We are very concerned about the fall. We have vacancies that, unfortunately, we have no candidates for,” Cohen said. “We’re really thankful (the agency’s nurses) got them to leave their families and their homes to come and help us. But we know it’s not a long-term solution,” Cohen said.
Read more: Ontario Health wants public-private integration as hospitals struggle with staffing
Differences in big city and small city results
Even big city hospitals in areas like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal are struggling. But the results for these hospitals play out differently. In a large, urban hospital, emergency rooms are staffed with more nurses and doctors during a given shift, which means that if enough nurses leave or get sick with COVID-19 — an ongoing and persistent problem in hospitals across the country — there are still enough staff to…
