Emergency room in northeastern Ontario is bent but unbroken

More than 20 emergency rooms across the state were forced to close during the July holidays. This is because the surge in visitors collided with an already overloaded and understaffed facility.

A weekend holiday that hit hospitals in the South and the rural Northwest particularly hard is the latest wake-up call in the ongoing staffing crisis for which healthcare workers are seeking help. I'm sorry.

Late last month, Nickelbelt MPP and his NDP health commentator France Gelinas announced that as part of the 2021-22 interim budget cuts, the state government would increase her 18 accused of withholding $100 million.

A report released by Ontario's Office of Financial Accountability on July 19 revealed staffing cuts as multiple emergency departments across the state temporarily closed due to staffing shortages. I was.

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At Wednesday's virtual press conference, Gelinas reiterated her concern that ED is struggling to survive.

"People have to wait 38 hours for her. People who are sick enough to be admitted to our hospital," she said. "Doctors don't want them to go home. They need to be admitted. And they sit in our hospital's ER waiting room for 38 hours before being admitted. It's like one meal, one and a half days of sleep and you're sick enough to be admitted to our hospital.

On Thursday, Ontario's health minister said nurses and doctors regulating universities to develop plans to enroll internationally educated professionals more quickly, a move that nursing groups and critics said was a step in the direction of the prime minister's promise to go all out. Address emergency room staffing crisis.

Sylvia Jones sent an order Thursday to the Ontario College of Nursing and the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons to ensure that these nurses He said every effort should be made to register doctors "as soon as possible" so that they can be seen in hospitals. She will do so and provide a report on how she will achieve it within two weeks.

The Minister also directed nursing colleges to develop support for internationally trained nurses.

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Hospitals across the state have been under strain in recent weeks, and some emergency rooms are understaffed, leaving several at a time. It is forced to close for hours or days. More temporary closures are expected this weekend in Clinton, Ontario and St. Mary's, Ontario.

Nursing groups, hospital executives, other medical professionals and advocates said he had been on the front lines of COVID-19 for more than two years and was burned out because he did not receive adequate compensation. , says it is causing people to leave the profession. drive.

Kathryn Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses Association, said the system would benefit from increasing the number of internationally trained nurses, but she said this specific directive I would like to see a report from the university before evaluating whether it is useful.

She also said news of the directive alone does not mean Prime Minister Doug Ford is doing everything in her power to deal with the personnel crisis, as she promised at a press conference Wednesday. .

"This is still closely linked to Bill 124," she said, Ms Hoy, who limits wage increases for public sector workers to 1% for three years, according to her 2019 referred to a law passed in

``You are going to bring in all the internationally trained nurses. , because there aren't enough nurses to coach, and do the jobs we need in Ontario, so we need to get those retired nurses back, and the only way to get them is to repeal Bill 124

Ford on Wednesday repealed wage control laws and increased nurse retention bonuses by $5,000. indicated not to. He also said the provisions of the law have expired and will not apply to the nurse's next contract negotiations.

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So far in northeastern Ontario, emergency rooms have avoided catastrophic incidents. Emergency rooms in the area have yet to report closures.

However, the situation remains precarious and patients are becoming increasingly frustrated due to ongoing staffing concerns.

At Health Sciences North, long wait times in emergency departments are a cause for concern for patients experiencing this problem in understaffed and understaffed hospitals.

In an email response to a request for comment, spokesperson Jessica Lopatka said it now takes most patients almost nine hours from triage for her ED to a decision to admit or discharge.

In most cases, the patient must wait nearly four hours before being evaluated by a physician.

The time from triage to hospital bed admission has improved, but since 2019, the time taken for physician evaluation has increased slightly, Lopatka said.

Although HSN wait times are below the state average (4.5 hours from triage to physician evaluation, 14 hours from triage to admission/discharge decision), staff shortages exacerbate the problem.

"HSN has been facing staffing issues throughout the organization, especially in the acute, emergency and critical care areas over the last two months," Lopatka said in a statement. rate, people choosing alternative employment options, and partly because of the shortage, the number of graduates it recruits is limited.

In June and her July, her ED on HSN averaged 205 visitors per day, in line with pre-pandemic figures and managing peak patient numbers The space to do so has skyrocketed.

According to Lopatka, an increasing proportion of patients have worsening or more complicated cases.

"Despite these circumstances, HSN has never closed or come close to closing its emergency department," she said. “Sometimes we have had to operate with fewer staff than we have enough staff. We have continued to work overtime and take extra shifts to provide the best care possible during this difficult situation. Thank you to all the health care workers who are here.”

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St. Joseph's General Hospital Elliott Lake faces similar challenges. CEO Jeremy Stevenson outlined these concerns in an article for The Elliot Lake Standard two weeks ago.

According to Stevenson, emergency departments have narrowly avoided closing many times.

"Emergency department closures are something we've never experienced before, but we're not immune to situations other local hospitals have experienced, and we continue to prepare for the possibility," Stevenson wrote. I'm here. “Despite the challenges we face, we are working hard every day for you to keep your ED open. Supporting our hospitals and our teams. We are grateful for the continued support of our community.”

ED's understaffing had ripple effects within the community. Physicians who typically work outside hospitals have stepped in to provide the necessary support to keep the facility running. As a result, some patients have canceled doctor visits at regional offices.

"Many times have our emergency departments had to close emergency care if they weren't willing to provide this support," Stevenson said.

Stevenson writes that patients use ED only in true emergencies and seek non-urgent alternative care from their primary care physician to prevent unnecessary spikes.

The situation is less clear in other hospitals in the region.

A spokeswoman for the Espanola Regional Hospital and Health Center said it does not accept media requests regarding the hospital's operations when requested for comment.

According to the website, Espanola Hospital's emergency department is open 24 hours a day and serves about 15,000 people each year. We provide services. It also notes that treatment with ED can take hours if a patient needs testing, if a doctor needs to consult a specialist, or if a patient with a more serious condition comes in. .

No staffing information was provided, but the hospital's website and social media have many job openings, including part-time emergency and acute ward clerks. We are also looking for Registered Nurses, Registered Nurses, and Personal Support Workers.

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Similarly, the Manitoulin Health Center, which operates two sites, Little Current and Mindemoya, declined to provide information about ED.

"I am extremely proud of our team for their continued dedication to providing quality healthcare services to our communities," said spokesperson Kelly Timmermans. I replied by email. "We continue to be very busy in the emergency department due to the local population, seasonal and tourist influx."

MHC experienced significant delays due to pandemic-related supply chain issues. is in the process of renovating and expanding the Mindemoya Emergency Department, a project In May, the organization announced that the project's completion date would be pushed back from his July to his September.

According to the MHC website, Mindemoya's emergency room has been used for her 9,500 patient visits to the emergency department. Dealing with 49% of him. In July and August of last year, ED visits jumped 3% from him, he said. The expansion project will increase the size of the ED by 1,700 square feet, providing more staff working space and patient privacy.

— Using Canadian Press files

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