At 8:56 p.m. Tuesday evening, a photo appeared on my laptop. Failed, at first glance. Nothing more than a big black rectangle. By scrutinizing it more closely, I ended up distinguishing a corridor and, in the doorway of a door, a low ray of light. “The HMR operating room currently,” said the text.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
All the operating rooms of the Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital were plunged into the dark. In the unit of intensive care, the staff was reduced to light with cellular and front lamps. Reduced to treating the sick with the means on board.
Photo provided by an HMR employee
The operating room of the Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital, plunged into the dark, Tuesday evening
It made me think of a makeshift hospital visited in Ukraine, on the front line1. Wounded soldiers were stabilized before being transferred to better equipped hospitals, far from combat areas. There was no running water or heating. The electricity failures were frequent.
And yet, there, the generators worked.
Not in Maisononneuve-Rosemont, this hospital which holds-literally-with spit. During the 90 minutes lasted by the breakdown on Tuesday evening, the generator did not work in four critical units: intensive care, the operating room, the alarm clock and coronary care.
In other words, the red sockets, which should never, never to lack electricity because they connect devices that keep patients alive, have … lacked electricity.
Miraculously, no one was under an artificial respirator at the time of the breakdown. No one had the chest opened on an operating table. That evening, Quebec narrowly avoided a tragedy.
What happened is nonetheless unacceptable – and should never happen again.
It’s the Dr Benjamin Léger-St-Jean, head of orthopedics at CIUSSS in Est-de-l’île-de-Montréal, who sent me the photo. He also put me in contact with his colleague, the Dr Patrick Wang, who had just finished a ten -hour operation2. And to approach the disaster.
«You are dr Wang had been ligning blood vessels [au moment de la panne]her patient could have died on the operating table, said the Dr Léger-St-Jean. These are real incidents that could have happened and we were extremely lucky that they do not happen. »»
Photo Charles William Pelletier, special collaboration
Dr Benjamin Léger-St-Jean, orthopedic surgeon at the East-de-Montréal Ciusss
In a big hospital like Maisonneuve-Rosemont, “the operating room rides a lot 24 hours a day,” adds the Dr Léger-St-Jean. It is not uncommon for surgeons to urgently operate patients who are in a precarious state.
-The rest may seem absurd, so obvious: “When you have fragile patients like that, being able to see what we are doing, it’s a priority for us. »»
Who would have believed it? Surgeons need to see what they are doing when they handle the scalpel a few millimeters from our nerves, our arteries and our vital organs!
What if Tuesday evening’s failure had surprised them in action? “We would have used the light of an iPhone. We would have organized ourselves, as we organize in an operating room in the war zone, as in Ukraine … “
Except that we are not in Ukraine.
Of course, there was a thunderstorm. Extreme, unexpected and uncontrollable events, it can happen-and hit the dilapidated Maisonneuve-Rosemont as the gleaming chum. This is not the problem.
“The problem is the inaction that will follow,” denounces the Dr Léger-St-Jean. We really have the impression that it does not bother politicians to make us work in these conditions, nor to play with the safety of patients. »»
Our leaders seem to believe that with a little hen pin, we should be able to manage for a few more years …
“In the eyes of Christian Dubé and François Legault, Maisonneuve-Rosemont, it is a country hospital that just serves people in the east of Montreal”, deplores the Dr Léger-St-Jean, who regularly heals patients from as far as Abitibi and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean.
The doctor fears that we are going quickly to something else and that no one, in government, has the honesty to say that what happened is not normal. And that this is proof, another, that we must give the green light to the construction of a new hospital. The latter has more than his time.
We are not just talking about improving the working conditions of employees, he says. “We just talk about sitting at a nursing position without the windows eruption and receiving glass shards. We just talk about having lights above our heads while we practice surgical operations! »»
We are talking about not getting stuck in the elevators all the time. To no longer have to pile up four patients in a room whose temperature climbs to 41 degrees during the summer months. And to no longer have to hunt squirrels which enter the unit of intensive care.
We are talking about being able to count on a generator that works in the event of an electricity failure.
The storm that fell on Maisonneuve-Rosemont may have had an advantage: that of turning the wind, finally, in Quebec.
For the first time, Wednesday, Christian Dubé suggested that the government could organize, in the end, to start the longtime promised site. “I can’t believe,” he said, “that you can’t find the money just to leave parking. »»
There are certainly a few places to look for it, this money. Around a ruinous computer overhaul, for example. Or else, from a ridiculously expensive motorway tunnel project, the relevance of which is not based on any serious study, but that this government is careful to want to carry out by pure electoralism.1. Read ” The press In Ukraine: survivors of the front ” 2. Read “Chaos in Maisonneuve-Rosemont, a teenager stuck under a tree”
