It’s frankly distressing. Despite an annual health budget of more than $50 billion, emergencies in Quebec are more dysfunctional than ever.
I know. In the middle of the holiday season, the subject is not jojo. But when you land in an emergency corridor, stuck for hours or days without receiving the care you need, believe me, it becomes a lot more concrete.
The situation is untenable. The very safety of patients is at stake. Crowded to 150-200% occupancy, several hospital emergency rooms have become real traps for medical errors, dehumanization of patients and perfectly avoidable deaths.
As journalist Aaron Derfel reports in The Gazette, in emergencies, still under pressure in Quebec, the situation is now worse than ever. Doctors even speak of a “catastrophe”.
Coudonc, will it be necessary to call the army in emergencies as the Legault government did for CHSLDs at the start of the pandemic?
SATURDAY, The Press reported a “punching letter addressed to the Minister of Health” by the Regroupement des chefs d’urgence du Québec (RCUQ), according to which emergencies had become “out of control”.
Here’s what the D saysD Marie-Maud Couture, president of the RCUQ, to Minister Christian Dubé: “We have challenged you, as well as your team, several times over the last few months, but inertia remains palpable at all decision-making levels and the crisis is not only get worse.”
In the middle of a nightmare
A “palpable inertia at all decision-making levels”. For Quebecers, this observation is terribly worrying.
“All ministerial attention was focused” on Minister Dubé’s mammoth reform, launches the RCUQ. Result: the health network has “completely frozen” and the situation in emergencies “has deteriorated dramatically”.
It feels like a nightmare. For Christian Dubé, one of the most popular ministers in the Legault government and whose trustworthiness is still high, this is a serious warning. This capital could melt away if the worst emergency crisis to date is not resolved.
Especially since in November 2022, while emergency workers had already been crying out their dismay for months, Minister Dubé promised to relieve emergency room congestion by creating a “crisis unit”.
However, a year later, this cell in which emergency doctors participated, among others, is no longer functional. In short, another announcement made to calm public opinion, but without the serious follow-up that it would have deserved.
Since it does not seem to be in the Ministry of Health or in the ivory towers of the CIUSSS, the expertise on emergencies, as we know, is found on the ground in emergencies.
Need to act quickly
It is that of doctors, nurses and attendants. Let us even dare to add that of patients, caregivers and those who represent them. The recipe for a significant improvement in the situation must come from them.
They are the ones the minister must hear. When you want to repair your pipes, you call a plumber. You don’t call a plumbing “manager.”
Managers who, in Health, are often busy protecting their backs in front of the minister. Even if it means not giving him the truthful portrait of what is happening.
Since the Barrette reforms, this same tendency towards disconnection from reality and chronic self-justification has also plagued the upper echelons of the health and social services network in its entirety.
In the meantime, there is an emergency in the emergency room. THE Larousse gives four ultra-clear definitions of the word “emergency”:
1) Character of that which suffers no delay. 2) Need to act quickly. 3) Pathological situation in which a diagnosis and treatment must be carried out very quickly. 4) Situation which may result in irreparable harm if it is not remedied promptly.
By the way, what is it that we don’t understand in the word “emergency”?