Thirty patients have been waiting in the emergency room for more than 24 hours for the only bed reserved for them at the Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur-de-Montréal, another victim of the health network’s overload.
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“We’re overcrowded,” notes Dr. Éric Piette, director of the emergency room at this trauma center on the north island of Montreal.
Today, as every day, he expects around forty ambulances, while eight people are already sharing the five available places in the resuscitation room.
Before COVID, about 40 extra beds were distributed in the rooms on the floors, each accommodating two or three patients, but sanitary measures forced the Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur to get rid of them.
Photo archive, Pierre-Paul Poulin
Result: The occupancy rate of the emergency room in hospitals is currently 140%.
A patient in the waiting room, she regrets not having found a doctor elsewhere.
“I’ve tried to make an appointment at Rendez-vous santé Québec and Clic Santé, but it’s impossible. It sends us super far and I can’t move,” explains the woman.
Faced with this volume of traffic, the nurses at the Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur are forced to work mandatory overtime.
One of them, Nathalie Paquin, has been in the profession for 20 years and regrets this situation.
“It sure is heartbreaking, we feel a little trapped in this situation,” she laments.
As a mother of four children, she is one of those women whose professional sense of duty collides with her family life.
“We are very aware that we cannot leave certain patients unattended, but we are also people with private lives.”
This decision, heartbreaking as it is, does not affect her vocation, she assures.
“Despite the obligatory overtime, I still enjoy my job.”