Ontario is looking to transfer patients to elderly care homes to make room at clogged hospitals
\nOTTAWA
\nAn acute nursing shortage is clogging or even closing hospital emergency rooms across Canada, pushing an already stressed national health system to the brink with potentially severe consequences for patient care.
\nBurnout from the Covid-19 pandemic, abuse from patients and salary discontent have seen nursing staff quitting their jobs in droves, and experts say the situation is only likely to worsen.
\nThe impact on emergency care is such that Ottawa police recently had to take a shooting victim to hospital in their squad car, rather than wait for an ambulance, and an elderly woman who fell and broke her hip was forced to wait six hours for help from paramedics based 100 kilometers (62 miles) away.
\nOver the summer and into the fall, staffing shortages meant dozens of emergency rooms were forced to close — sometimes for a night or a weekend, sometimes longer.
\nWait times to see an ER doctor have soared to 12, 16, 20 hours — or more.
\n\u201cThey\u2019re numb, deflated and feeling hopeless,\u201d said Cathryn Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses\u2019 Association. Herself a nurse for 20 years, she described the situation as \u201ccritical.\u201d
\nAmelie Inard, 32, was taken to an ER in Montreal this week, in extreme pain and peeing blood.
\nThe place was packed, and an overwrought nurse told her to describe her condition \u201cin one sentence, really quickly, because of how busy they were,\u201d Inard said.
\nShe eventually left in frustration, without seeing a doctor.
\nHospital workloads are rising, Hoy said, along with patients\u2019 exasperation over extended wait times, leading to a spiking of violence against nurses.
\nSeveral nurses told AFP they had been punched, scratched or spat on, and had trays, dishes and feces thrown at them.
\n\u2018Crazy conditions\u2019
\nIn the capital Ottawa, ambulances were unavailable on more than 1,000 occasions from January to July, as paramedics were stuck waiting to unload patients at crowded ERs.
\nA hospital in Peterborough, east of Toronto, in the past week was forced to treat patients on gurneys in the parking lot because its ER was full, said Hoy.
\nIn Manitoba, doctor Merril Pauls said there had been \u201cmultiple times throughout the summer when we had to shut down beds in the emergency room\u201d at Winnipeg\u2019s Health Sciences Centre because of the nursing shortage.
\nOn one recent Sunday, he said, \u201cWe had too many people coming in and had no place to put them. We literally were double-bunking critical patients in a resuscitation bay.
\n\u201cOur nurses are really working in crazy conditions.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s a \u201creally significant phenomenon going on across the country,\u201d the doctor added, and it\u2019s \u201cgetting worse.\u201d
\nHigh turnover
\nA recent survey by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the country\u2019s largest labor union, found that 87 percent of nurses have considered leaving their job \u201cbecause of the thankless and grueling working conditions.\u201d
\n\u201cEven new graduates are quitting,\u201d Hoy said.
\nFederal health minister Jean-Yves Duclos has vowed to make it easier for foreign credentials to be recognized. That could help 11,000 internationally trained doctors and nurses get jobs in their field in Canada.
\nBut that won\u2019t be nearly enough, with 34,400 nursing positions now vacant, according to government data.
\nCompounding the problem, many Canadians — like Inard — don\u2019t have a family doctor and turn to emergency rooms for care.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s just so difficult to find a family doctor,\u201d she said.
\nAnd a frequent shortage of regular hospital beds often means long waits to transfer patients out of ERs to wards.
\nOntario passed a bill at the end of September permitting transfers of patients awaiting long-term care to facilities up to 150 kilometers away.
\nProvincial Health Minister Sylvia Jones said it would \u201cease pressures on crowded emergency departments.\u201d
\nBut critics say it could force frail, elderly people into care homes far from their loved ones.
\nFor now, almost everyone needing treatment is eventually seen. But delays can pose long-term consequences for patients\u2019 health.
\n\u201cIf a stroke patient doesn\u2019t get access to a clot-busting medicine fast, brain cells will die and the patient will end up being more disabled than they would have been,\u201d Pauls said.A tired nurse holds her head after a long shift at Toronto\u2019s Humber River Hospital in April 2021; workloads have become heavier since then, prompting a health care crisis
\nSerious infections can be deadly if not treated in time. So, too, can cancers and other diseases, he added.
\nPauls recalled routinely telling discharged patients \u201cto come back if things get worse.\u201d
\n\u201cBut now they laugh at us. They say: \u2018You\u2019re crazy. There\u2019s no way I\u2019m going to go through this again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ontario is looking to transfer patients to elderly care homes to make room at clogged hospitals OTTAWA An acute nursing shortage is clogging or even closing hospital emergency rooms across Canada, pushing an already stressed national health system to the brink with potentially severe consequences for patient care. Burnout from the Covid-19 pandemic, abuse from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-288732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n