The emergency situation at the Lakeshore General Hospital in Pointe-Claire is “very difficult” and “crystallized in bad habits,” an independent investigation report revealed Thursday. In order to improve these conditions, a modular building will temporarily accommodate emergencies next November.
Posted at 2:38 p.m.
Updated at 4:06 p.m.
The independent investigator, Francine Dupuis, noted “significant shortcomings” in the organization of services and identified 135 recommendations to be implemented, she announced at a press conference on Thursday.
She reports a “culture” of toxic emergency, including many tensions between professionals, executives, emergency physicians and specialists. “A lot of energy is devoted to defending oneself and blaming the other”, notes the investigator in her report.
In February, the daily The Gazette revealed that over the past four years there has been an increasing number of patient deaths that ER staff believe could have been avoided and whose true circumstances have never been communicated to families.
It included the story of a retired police officer with suicidal thoughts who took his own life after being left unattended in a hallway for more than 14 hours.
Faced with these disturbing revelations, the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, had asked for an independent investigation to be launched.
However, several problems were already known. A report written by mediator Marie Boucher, and filed last October, described the hospital’s emergency room as a “ticking time bomb” for caregivers and patients. She had submitted a series of recommendations to management.
A temporary building
To improve staff conditions and respond to the dilapidated state of emergencies, a modular building will temporarily accommodate emergencies next November, the CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal announced on Thursday.
“The ER was built in the 1980s. It’s a square block with exam rooms and fields of view that aren’t ideal,” said Dan Gabay, president and CEO of CIUSSS West Island of Montreal.
This new building will provide the population and employees with “an emergency that meets standards and additional stretchers,” the CIUSSS said in a press release. This temporary establishment will also house the University Family Medicine Group, which will make it possible to redirect emergency patients classified in the least serious priority scale (4 and 5).
“Puff in the Eyes”
Several union members showed up at the press conference, sign in hand, to put forward their point of view. “It’s window dressing,” said Johanne Riendeau, president of the Union of Health Care Professionals of the West Island of Montreal.
She regrets that the reports and their recommendations accumulate without having any concrete impact on the employees. “There are 135 recommendations in the report. In the report of an expert that we had in October 2022, there were 14 recommendations and the employer is slow to apply them, ”she adds.
“We want to believe in this report, but it is difficult to believe it, especially when it says that there will be a technological shift and the digitization of files. Currently, there are only CLSCs and two departments at LaSalle Hospital where files are digitized,” added the local president of the CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal for the Syndicat québécois des service employees (SQEES), Maryse Valiquette.
Emergency workers held a sit in last weekend. “There is a crying shortage of nurses in the Lakeshore emergency room. Six out of 13 nurses were short on Sunday, Ms.me Riendeau. It’s hard to run an emergency when he lacks expertise. »
