After doctors from Outaouais, it is the turn of those from Hautes-Laurentides to sound the alarm. The 12 emergency doctors at the Mont-Laurier hospital report that the emergency room is reaching “a peak” of dilapidation and suffers from a glaring lack of staff. If the shortage of caregivers continues to worsen, they fear that “unsafe care” will be given in the short term. According to them, the lives of patients could even be put in danger.
In a letter sent to Duty, the 12 emergency doctors at Mont-Laurier hospital are launching a heartfelt cry. “The Mont-Laurier emergency room is in crisis, but above all in survival mode,” they write. The signatories say they want to inform the population of Hautes-Laurentides that “critical situations” occur “daily” in their unit.
For almost four years, the Mont-Laurier emergency room has coexisted with the intensive care unit due to a lack of nurses. However, mental health cases “have literally exploded” in the emergency room, doctors say. “Despite our incessant requests to provide a safe and suitable isolation room for our agitated patients, nothing is being done,” they say in their letter.
Patients in psychological distress or in crisis are placed on a stretcher in front of the nurses’ and doctors’ station, close to seriously ill patients in intensive care who are trying to rest. “This is dangerous for patients [en crise] themselves, the other patients present and our treating staff,” estimate the emergency doctors. “Patients want to leave intensive care quickly for fear of patients screaming in the emergency room, next to their room. »
The emergency team is still walking on a tightrope, according to the DD Marie-Claude Lacaille, who practices there. The hospital center’s stretcher occupancy rate regularly exceeds 150%, and sometimes even 200%. However, four nurses work during the day in the unit, including one in triage, in an external trailer, and one in the short-stay unit, located “extremely far” from the nurses’ and doctors’ station. During lunch hours, the three of them meet up.
“They have the right to eat”, underlines the DD Lacaille in interview at Duty. “But we still need people who supervise the monitoring. The reality is that sometimes I’m at the station and we hear the alarms ringing and we realize there’s no one monitoring them. » The nurses are all busy elsewhere.
The situation is even more precarious, explains the DD Lacaille, when an emergency nurse accompanies a patient by ambulance who must be transferred to a hospital in the “South”. The round trip takes at least six hours, almost a full shift, and it happens every week, according to the doctor. “We are still at critical staff thresholds, both in terms of nurses and respiratory therapists. »
According to the Union of Healthcare Professionals of the Laurentides-FIQ, 23% of day nursing positions are currently not filled in the Mont-Laurier emergency room.
No MRI, lack of heart monitors
Emergency physicians at Mont-Laurier hospital also deplore the “lack of access” to radiology. They denounce the abandonment of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device project, “which had been promised to the Hautes-Laurentides by a minister ten years ago following relevance studies”. According to them, MRI should be “accessible to all”.
Cardiac monitoring devices are also lacking, according to the DD The quail. She points out that sometimes a device has to be taken away from one patient to give it to another, because one is missing.
The DD Marie-Pierre Chalifoux, spokesperson for the Coalition Santé Laurentides, deplores that the means made available to doctors have not been “upgraded” over the years. His group is calling for “fair funding” for the region, which it considers underfunded in terms of health. “The older the population gets, the more complex cases become, the more doctors need investigations and examinations to ensure patient safety,” says the DD Chalifoux. “Our emergency physicians find themselves with more and more heart patients, vulnerable patients. »
The 12 emergency doctors from Mont-Laurier do not blame the CISSS des Laurentides, which is trying to “stamp as best as possible the bleeding that threatens the hospitals of the Hautes-Laurentides”. The DD Neither does Chalifoux. “They can’t make something new out of something old, and there are always limits to what they can do with the envelopes they receive,” she says.
The DD Lacaille believes that the Hautes-Laurentides must be made more attractive. The region is not in competition with Ontario, as is the case with Outaouais, which is facing an exodus of personnel due to higher salaries. But Mont-Laurier is far from major centers. “We have no differentiated remuneration for our staff, no financial increase for practicing here. What is the added value of working here? versus at the Saint-Jérôme hospital, unless you have family here? There is nothing attractive about coming to work here,” she says.
Questioned about this letter, the CISSS des Laurentides confirms that the Mont-Laurier hospital lacks nursing staff “despite strong recruitment strategies”. “We owe the maintenance of services to the immense will of our teams and to the collaboration between services,” we wrote in an email.
The establishment claims to be working to improve the working conditions of employees and the physical organization of the emergency. “The work to install an isolation room will begin within a few weeks, for a period of approximately two months,” it is stated.