Lanaudière Regional Hospital Center | Emergencies are not safe, nurses warn

Nurses from the emergency room of the Joliette hospital, in Lanaudière, are crying out from the heart: they lack arms to the point of risking, according to them, endangering the safety of their patients. As a last resort, they ask for the partial closure of emergencies.

Lila Dussault
The Press

“It’s not funny when you brush the eyes off the emergency and wonder: which patient are we going to miss because we are too overwhelmed? “, denounces Jessica Perreault, who has worked for seven years at the Lanaudière Regional Hospital Center (also known as the Joliette Hospital).

Thursday, the hospital emergency room occupancy rate was 185%, according to statistics from IndexSanté.ca, one of the highest in Quebec. Wednesday evening was even worse: the occupancy rate reached 191%. When Jessica Perreault arrived for her shift, she realized that she and her colleagues were – once again – only 12 nurses on the floor, rather than the 20 required to provide safe care.

“The employer offered as a solution that we take more patients,” she says in a telephone interview. It was: absorb, and arrange so that nothing happens [de grave]. »

But the responsibility for care falls on his shoulders, explains M^me Perréault. “The day when something happens to a patient, it’s my fault, not that of the manager who told me to take more,” she asserts. It’s mine ! »

Under the circumstances, she and her colleagues refused to work, asking that the emergency room be partially closed and that patients be diverted to the Pierre-Le Gardeur hospital. An option refused by the employer, she says.

Then they made a sit in – which consists of sitting down in peaceful protest – to denounce the situation. The nurses on the day shift had to continue to work overtime to make up for their absence.

“It’s dangerous,” adds M.^me Perreault, who has already experienced burnout. “I feel guilty to leave, but also to stay giving this care, accepting it. I feel like I have a guillotine over my head…”

The CISSS de Lanaudière did not respond to the request for information from The Press at the time these lines were written.

An untenable situation

“What is happening is a volcano ready to explode for a long time, and there, it explodes”, illustrates Marie-Chantal Bédard, vice-president of the interprofessional union of Lanaudière (FIQSIL).

M^me Bédard describes a critical situation at the Joliette hospital, where sit in and “compulsory overtime” (TSO) are frequent due to a serious lack of personnel. “And the employer continues to offer all the services, even if he does not have all the employees to do so,” she maintains.

The labor shortage has a direct impact on patient care. On June 28, 67 hospital emergency room workers signed an open letter that The Press was able to consult. Examples abound:

“That a patient was found in cardiac arrest, when she was not in a suitable area with the required monitoring. »

“That very old people sometimes wait 48 to 72 hours in the corridors of the emergency room. »

“That a person at the end of life did not get a room for more than three days, so that they lived their last moments in a corridor, behind a curtain. »

Marie-Chantal Bédard even describes an employee with COVID-19 who had to continue working in the resuscitation area because there was no one to replace her.

“The goal of the employees is to alert the population, adds M^me Bedard. They turned to their employer, to the CEO of the hospital, to us, the union. When they got there, they tried everything. »

Respect a patient-caregiver ratio

The main request of the signatories of the open letter is the establishment of ratios between caregivers and patients “adapted to the occupancy rate of the emergency room, in accordance with the Emergency Management Guide”.

The revision of this ratio was also one of the recommendations of the report of coroner Géhane Kamel in October 2021 following the investigation into the death of Joyce Echaquan in the same hospital, the previous fall.

A request reiterated by a dozen organizations and professional associations last April.

If the hospital fails to comply with their request, the employees are asking for a partial or total closure of the hospital’s emergency rooms, like six other Quebec emergency rooms partially closed this summer.

“The situation is really critical, for real, assures Marie-Chantal Bédard. Girls, they can’t take it anymore. »