Promised for last week on the North Shore, the first flying team of the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, is still awaited while new service disruptions are expected at the Sept-Îles hospital.
Between July 6 and 9, there will be no beds available for children at the Sept-Îles hospital. Those who arrive at the emergency room will be transferred to Baie-Comeau or elsewhere in Quebec. In the days that follow, it will be the turn of newborn babies who need to be kept under observation to suffer the same fate.
“It is a lack of nursing staff that is forcing the CISSS to reduce certain services from July 6 to 15,” indicated CISSS spokesperson Jean-Christophe Beaulieu by email.
The Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, had nevertheless promised to send reinforcements to the site in the form of a “flying team” of around forty people.
Originally, Mr. Dubé had said that the first teams would arrive on June 20. However, on June 19, he announced that a first team would be deployed to the Côte-Nord the following week. A week later, only one nurse was sent to the site as reinforcements, according to our information.
On Wednesday, the minister acknowledged that the “deadline was too long” on Platform X. About “thirty” people have been hired so far to be part of the flying team, he added. The goal is to recruit 500.
Patients who suffer
“There is like a “melting pot“problems and in the meantime, it’s the patients who are suffering,” laments Dr. Youssef Ezahr, anesthesiologist at Le Royer Hospital and president of the Council of Physicians, Dentists and Pharmacists of the Côte-Nord. “Normally, we are supposed to have an equitable health care system in Quebec.”
Since mid-May, about sixty patients have been transferred outside the region, he points out. With the new service disruptions in Sept-Îles, others should be added, according to him, since the Baie-Comeau Hospital “does not have the capacity” to absorb new patients. Due to the lack of nurses, the operating room at Le Royer Hospital has been operating at 50% of its capacity since mid-May.
Mr. Ezahr does not expect miracles from the flying team, which he compares to a “band-aid” stuck on a hemorrhage. Nurses who stay for short periods cannot be very effective, he says. “They don’t know where the equipment is, how the protocols work.” “As soon as we have new staff, we train them, but they leave.”