A crisis in intensive care at one of Toronto’s major hospitals is forcing management to redeploy staff from its operating rooms to that unit, according to an email sent to surgeons on Thursday, including The duty got a copy. The redeployment will force the closure of three operating rooms at Sunnybrook Hospital, as the province prepares to deconfine.
The hospital’s intensive care unit is reportedly facing a staffing crisis due to an influx of patients hardest hit by COVID-19 and employee absenteeism. ” I know that [le redéploiement] will create chaos, but we have explored other options and found none,” writes the Dr Avery Nathans, Chief of Surgeries, in his message to employees.
From Monday, three operating rooms will be closed at the hospital, which had already closed six due to load shedding. The establishment has 20 in total. The crisis in intensive care at the hospital’s main campus in east Toronto also means operating room workers at the Holland Center — a smaller, downtown campus — will be repatriated, says the email. The redeployment of human resources will be short-lived, notes the head of operations in his missive.
This comes at the very time when the Ontario government is preparing on Monday to allow hospitals to gradually resume their non-emergency operations and to partially reopen its restaurants, bars and performance halls. On Friday, the government announced that eight more patients had been admitted to intensive care, for a total of 607 across the province.
Slow recovery
In an email, Alexandra Hilkene, spokeswoman for Health Minister Christine Elliott, however, conceded that not all hospitals would be able to immediately resume non-emergency operations, after more than 21 days of shutdown. The resumption of surgical activities could also be slow in other hospitals in the Toronto area.
At Michael Garron Hospital in East York, about half of the operating rooms are in use “to relieve pressure on staff and due to the increase in the number of patients requiring acute care”, the report said. Chief of Surgery, Dr.r Carmen Simone. “We are triaging according to priority and time factor as we have done in previous waves, in order to ensure that our critical patients have access to the operation they need”, continues the surgeon in an email.
Elsewhere in the province, some hospital leaders warned that the announcement of the resumption of surgical activities was premature. ” That will take time. Things are not going to go back to normal in a snap of the fingers,” illustrated Windsor Regional Hospital CEO David Musyj during a call with local media on Friday.
This story is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.