Lachine Hospital | Doctors fight to keep emergency rooms open at night

(Montreal) La D^D Fahimy Saoud spent a recent shift in the Lachine emergency room waiting for patients who she knew full well would never come.

The emergency room, where she has practiced for 12 years, is normally well filled with patients waiting for her care, but these people are now being redirected to other hospitals. Since November 7, the service has been closed between 7:30 p.m. and 7:30 a.m.

For the D^D Saud, this decision left her with a sense of helplessness and also great concern.

“Sitting idle between 7:30 p.m. and midnight, knowing that the other hospitals in the area are overflowing with additional patients… Our teams are here, but we can’t work! », She laments.

To justify the closure of its emergencies, the Lachine Hospital affirms that this had become necessary due to a shortage of critical staff, including in particular respiratory therapists.

As a result, all ambulances, between 7:30 p.m. and 7:30 a.m., are redirected to the McGill University Health Center or the Montreal General Hospital.

The D^D Saoud says he fears that closing the emergency will put patients at risk since some of them may not want to make the extra trip to get treatment at another health center.

She claims to have already observed a drop in the number of consultations over the past few days.

“Have all the options been taken into account? She asks. “It’s as if we wanted to treat a disease, but with means that could rather kill the patient”, compares the general practitioner.

His colleague, the D^r Paul Saba, president of the Lachine Hospital Physicians’ Committee, explains that the shortage of respiratory therapists is caused by pay inequity with other Montreal hospitals.

“Four specialists have left in the past year and they said that the reason for their departure was mainly the pay gap between caring for patients in Lachine or caring for the same patients downtown,” reveals Dr.^r Saba.

In fact, it is a bonus offered by the Quebec government to health workers in intensive care units that would attract staff to large hospitals. These bonuses would not be offered to Lachine staff, according to D^r Saba.

In a written statement, the Department of Health maintained that workers at the Lachine Hospital are eligible for the same bonuses as all other professionals in the network.

Ministry spokesman Robert Maranda assures us that the government is looking for a solution to reopen the emergency room at night.

But in the opinion of D^r Saba, the current decision would rather demonstrate “easy and lazy care management”. “On top of that, it’s dangerous because we’re depriving people of the services they need,” he adds.

“It’s not a snack. We cannot close an emergency 12 hours a day, ”he protested.

$ 15,000 out of pocket

The D^r Saba announced Friday that doctors are ready to contribute to pay an annual premium of $ 15,000 per year, for two years, to the first three respiratory therapists who express their desire to work in Lachine.

The Ministry of Health reacted by saying that it could not support such an approach since it is not “framed by a collective agreement or a ministerial decree”.

“We cannot condone this practice which creates inequality between establishments,” replied Mr. Maranda.

For the D^r François Plante, who has practiced in Lachine for more than 40 years, offering premiums paid out of his pocket is nothing normal, but for him, it is better to pay than to close the door to patients.

” What can we do ? Be silent and remain closed and leave the population without access to health care in our hospital? “, he asks. The D^r Plante said he was rather ready to contribute up to $ 3,000 if that could help reopen the emergency.

The D^D Saoud believes this initiative is both necessary and heroic.