“We are at boltsand it’s not even winter yet… Imagine!” says an exasperated nurse. “We don’t have a head of department today, patients don’t come up [sur les étages]we get stupid things thrown at us, we all want to cry,” sighs the professional again.
In the garage, where the ambulances remain stuck for hours, the exasperation is the same. “We just got out, it took two and a half hours, and even worse, sometimes it’s longer than that,” confides an ambulance driver as he leaves the hospital.
On both sides, staff members struggle to explain that the situation continues and that we always come back to reliving the same scenarios.
“Last week, I spent three hours in the garage three times,” says the paramedic who spoke to us. Redundancy ends up undermining troop morale, he explains.
On the nurses’ side, the work overload also ends up weighing heavily.
“We raised our quotas. In the emergency room, we’re supposed to take four patients, because of the heart monitors and everything, but here we are at five. According to our manager, it is legal, but with proper care [que nécessitent] our patients are a lot.”
— A nurse from the CHAUR emergency room, in Trois-Rivières
The person who spoke on condition of anonymity, to avoid reprisals, reported in the middle of the afternoon that 64 stretchers were occupied in the emergency room, and that 40 additional patients were waiting to be taken care of in the room. waiting, in addition to ambulances in the garage.
Many patients on the floors, says the CIUSSS
As for the authorities of the CIUSSS de la Mauricie-et-du-Centre-du-Québec, we confirm that traffic was particularly high at CHAUR on Wednesday, in the middle of the day. We also ensure that we have put in place various measures aimed at increasing the flow of patients through the provision of services.
However, despite the diversion of certain non-urgent cases to other hospital centers, the reopening of closed beds due to lack of manpower, the reassessment aimed at bringing forward certain discharges to users, congestion remains problematic, agrees -on.
“The issue of fluidity is really linked to a large number of users who need care and services in the hospital,” explains Kellie Forand, information officer at the CIUSSS MCQ.
Ms. Forand, however, was not able to confirm the absence of a head of emergency department, a situation which would have contributed to the congestion observed on Wednesday, according to staff members.
The fluidity of patients and care is managed globally, and the absence of a framework, at one time or another, in no way affects the movement between the different services, however, maintains the spokesperson for the establishment.
As for the buffer zone, temporarily set up in the hospital garage in the fall of 2023 to release ambulances more quickly, the measure would have proven to be inconclusive.
In essence, it is explained that a garage cannot be considered as a care unit. The place was not suitable for people with mental health disorders or cognitive problems, we give as an example. The temperature prevailing in the place is also pointed out to justify the end of the initiative.
It therefore seems that, for lack of anything better, paramedics will have to continue to watch over their patients, when the overcrowding of the emergency prevents them from being triaged.
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