A newborn baby who had no major health problems had to be transferred by plane from Baie-Comeau to Quebec without his mother last Saturday because the hospital nursery was closed for lack of nurses. Only his father was able to accompany him.
“This is not humane care, it is 2024”, indignant the Dr Youssef Ezahr, who is an anesthesiologist at Le Royer hospital in Baie-Comeau and president of the Council of Physicians, Dentists and Pharmacists of the North Shore.
The Dr Ezahr was present on Saturday when a newborn baby had to be transferred to Quebec. The child was fine, he explains, but he needed to receive respiratory support for four to six hours. However, due to staff shortages, the nursery at Le Royer hospital is currently closed. “We couldn’t keep him because I don’t have nurses in the nursery. I found myself telling the patient that her baby was going to have to be transferred to the CHUL in Quebec,” he says.
“The mother’s first instinct is to accompany her baby. Except she can’t because she just gave birth. So, it was the father who found himself on the plane to go directly to Quebec. » The woman, he said, “was in despair, sadness”.
According to the Dr Ezahr, between 20 and 25 patients have been transferred outside the region since May 13, including many children, because the pediatric department is also closed. “As long as you have a child who enters the Baie-Comeau emergency room, their risk is close to 100% of being transferred if they need short-term hospitalization,” he laments. .
Overwhelmed emergencies
In certain cases, patients can be transferred a little closer: the Sept-Îles hospital, a little over 3 hours away, whose pediatric department is still open. But the situation of this health establishment is also precarious, and its emergency is in the same situation as that of Baie-Comeau. Normally, they have a capacity of 25 places each, but they only have 10 beds at the moment.
” It’s not [le niveau] of care that should be given to the population of the North Shore, laments the doctor. These people pay taxes, as much as you and me. »
On Monday, health authorities on the North Shore did not want to comment on the story of the newborn transferred without his mother. “We do not provide information on specific situations in order to preserve confidentiality” of patients, indicated the communications advisor of the Integrated Health and Social Services Center (CISSS) of the North Shore, Pascal Paradis.
The CISSS also refuses to say how many people have been transferred to other hospitals in recent days. Mr. Paradis concedes, however, that “the closure of the Baie-Comeau nursery and pediatrics generates additional transfers, since children who would normally be hospitalized in Baie-Comeau must be transferred to Sept-Îles or outside the region. region “.
The CISSS spokesperson also mentions that the “capacity of the Baie-Comeau and Sept-Îles emergencies [est] limited” and that “transfers can also be made” when they overflow.
The situation is critical on the North Shore and in Abitibi-Témiscamingue since the entry into force of new Quebec regulations on the use of labor from personnel placement agencies. To reduce the use of this independent workforce, Quebec has decided to cap the salary and the number of hours of weekly work that can be allocated to them.
After the announcement of the service cuts on May 13, the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, committed to doing “everything possible to alleviate the situation as quickly as possible.”
On May 16, he announced the creation of a new “public flying team” to help remote regions lacking manpower. A squad to which, among others, the national coordinator of access to care and services of the Ministry of Health, Michel Delamarre, belongs, was also dispatched to the North Shore.
However, the public flying team does not yet exist, and the arrival of Mr. Delamarre’s squad has not resolved anything, according to Dr Ezahr, who says he met him last Friday.