At the start of summer, the situation is dangerous in the emergency room of the Lanaudière Hospital Center (CHDL), in Joliette, while the occupancy rate is exploding and there is a shortage of staff. This is why we, the healthcare professionals who work there every day, feel that it is time to warn the Lanaudière population of the dangers they run when they go to the CHDL emergency room.
Posted at 3:47 p.m.
Even if the efforts of the CISSS de Lanaudière to implement coroner Géhane Kamel’s recommendations concerning cultural security following the tragic death of Joyce Echaquan are commendable, it is clear that the CISSS has done nothing to implement the recommendations aimed at improving the organization of nursing care.
In September 2021, Me Kamel recommended, among other things, that the CISSS de Lanaudière review its nurse/patient ratios, since they were well below current provincial standards and did not allow for the provision of quality care.
However, nothing has changed, despite our cries from the heart and our repeated requests.
And we see it daily: the lack of personnel has serious consequences on the quality and safety of the care provided to the citizens of Lanaudière.
We denounce, for example:
– that a patient was found in cardiac arrest when she was not in a suitable area with the required monitoring. Fortunately, the patient’s pressure device alarm alerted a staff member;
– that very old people sometimes wait 48 to 72 hours in the corridors of emergencies, without the possibility of being mobilized, of moving, of walking, so that they decondition themselves, which unfortunately leads to prolonged stays in hospital hospital ;
– that a person at the end of life has not obtained a room for more than three days, so that he has lived his last moments in a corridor, behind a curtain. She and her loved ones have thus not obtained the comfort and dignity to which they are entitled;
– that there are still not three triage nurses on the day and evening shifts. Last week, triage delays were sometimes up to two hours and patients are not being reassessed in the waiting room. This is against the departmental standard. In addition, pre-triage does not exist in these emergencies. If a patient presents with a stroke, they may not be assessed quickly enough to receive medication within four hours, as their condition requires;
– that staff are not trained in paediatrics even though approximately 20% of emergency room consultations concern children;
– that the resuscitation area, the nerve center of emergencies, is often severely understaffed, thereby causing the uncovering of other emergency areas. Worse still, when transferring a patient to other establishments, a single nurse may then be responsible for the entire resuscitation area while the usual ratio is rather three nurses;
– that the fields of expertise of the healthcare professionals are still not respected in the various emergency rooms.
Faced with these dangerous circumstances for patients, we are asking the CISSS de Lanaudière to protect the population by establishing care professional/patient ratios in the CHDL emergency room as soon as possible.
These ratios must be adapted to the emergency room occupancy rate, in accordance with the Emergency Management Guide.
If the establishment is unable to implement these ratios, it should act responsibly by partially or totally closing the CHDL emergencies, as is the case elsewhere in Quebec during the summer period.
To read: the text of Lila Dussault in the News section