An octogenarian who went to the emergency room in Montreal on Sunday morning was told she would have to wait all day before she could have access to an ambulance.
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Solange Perreault, an 86-year-old woman living at the Alfredo Gagliardi residence, had to go to the emergency room for a health condition that did not endanger her life.
“The dorm called the ambulance to pick her up and take her to the hospital because she can no longer walk because one of her legs has stopped working. But the wait was 12 hours this morning,” his daughter, Nancy Doucet, told QMI.
To avoid that wait, Ms. Doucet decided to leave her home on the North Shore to pick up her mother. Luckily she had a wheelchair at home so he could take her to the hospital.
“It’s not easy there. I’m not staying in Montreal. I had to leave home to go to Montreal. It’s not instantaneous,” Ms Doucet commented on the phone that afternoon as she waited with her mother in the emergency room for a doctor’s visit.
hard weekend
The head of the department and Urgences-santé spokesman, Jean-Pierre Rouleau, acknowledged that the weekend was difficult for the paramedics and it is “quite possible that some patients had to wait at ten, twelve o’clock”.
“It’s not what we want, it’s not the norm,” Mr. Rouleau said.
According to him, Urgences-santé paramedics, which cover the islands of Montreal and Laval, had to process around a thousand calls a day on Friday and Saturday, a number that forced the organization to implement its recovery plan by prioritizing calls by severity.
“Our mission is to reduce mortality,” the public relations officer said, urging people to prioritize other options, such as B. calling 811 or finding a mode of transportation other than the ambulance.
The shortage of paramedics can still be felt in the metropolis. Despite overtime, Urgences-santé is fighting to get enough people onto the streets.
“We wanted to hire more than 100 paramedics. This year we have reached thirty. There’s about 60, 70 people missing that we can’t put on the ground,” Mr Rouleau said.