COVID-19: Montreal docs say the pandemic has exacerbated employees shortages throughout the system
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The Canadian press
Jacob Serebrin
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MONTREAL – The emergency room overcrowding in hospitals in east Montreal is the “canary in the coal mine” of the deplorable state of the city’s health network, according to the head of the intensive care unit of one of the battered hospitals.
“Whatever goes wrong in the hospital will show up in the emergency room first,” said Dr. Francois Marquis, head of the intensive care unit at the Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital, in an interview on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, a group of emergency doctors from the health department in the east of the city wrote an open letter to the state government about the shortage of nurses. Exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the bottlenecks are overwhelming emergency rooms, read the letter posted by at least two Montreal news organizations.
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Marquis, who was not a signatory to the letter, said his intensive care unit usually has between 20 and 25 beds but is 50 percent full because there are not enough staff.
“Right now I struggle every day to keep 10 to 12 beds open. The result is that many operations that require mandatory ICU stay are delayed, ”he said, adding that sometimes he cannot discharge patients who are better off because beds are not available in the wake up unit.
The public outcry from doctors comes as the government tries to catch up on surgeries that have been postponed due to the pandemic.
“We are not in recovery mode because we cannot enter recovery mode,” said Marquis. There is one COVID-19 patient in his intensive care unit and only a handful in other parts of the hospital, he added.
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According to the doctor’s letter, half of the nursing positions and three quarters of the positions for respiratory therapists are vacant in the Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital. Doctors said staff shortages had resulted in bed closings in other parts of the hospital and in local long-term health facilities, which put more pressure on emergency rooms across the city.
Catherine Dion, spokeswoman for the health authority, said in addition to the staff shortage, there had been a summer leave for employees.
“After more than a year of sustained and uninterrupted work addressing the health crisis, the (Health Authority) believes it imperative to give their employees a well-deserved break during this important summer vacation,” Dion wrote in an email on Wednesday.
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Part of the problem, the doctors write, is mandatory overtime, which has been introduced to avoid service interruptions. Forced overtime, they said, has pushed health workers out of the public system and into the private health network, which offers better hours and working conditions.
Jocelyn Vachon, president of the professional association representing respiratory therapists, Ordre professionnel des inhalotherapeutes du Quebec, said there are several factors that have led to the shortage of members. Workers are leaving the field completely and switching from the public system to private operation centers and fewer people are taking part in training programs, he said in an interview on Wednesday.
Like nurses, respiratory therapists had to face mandatory overtime during the pandemic, often because coworkers contracted COVID-19, Vachon added. He said the government should offer university-level training in respiratory therapy rather than college-level training to attract recruits and ensure they are more competent and confident after graduation.
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Marjaurie Cote-Boileau, a spokeswoman for Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube, said doctors were rightly concerned but the government was acting after years of neglect.
The government, Cote-Boileau said in an email on Wednesday, has limited the health system’s reliance on recruitment agencies and capped the agencies’ fee rates. It is also trying to reduce emergency rooms by investing more in home care and telemedicine, she added.
Quebec reported 75 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and no deaths related to the novel coronavirus for a second straight day. The Ministry of Health said hospital admissions fell by six to 79, and 25 people are in intensive care, unchanged since Tuesday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 14, 2021.
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This story was produced with financial support from Facebook and the Canadian Press News Fellowship.
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