Pediatric hospitals are facing serious pressure across Canada, with multiple provinces reporting double-digit wait times for emergency patients.
In Edmonton, inpatient beds at the Stollery Children’s Hospital are at capacity, and doctors say the ER is backed up.
Dr. Shazma Mithani, who is a regular columnist with CBC Edmonton with her Everyday ER series, joins hosts Min Dhariwal and Clare Bonnyman on The Loop to share what she’s seeing.
And CBC News provincial affairs reporter Janet French explains the political discussion around what happens next.
The Loop22:28The kids are not alright
Pediatric hospitals are facing serious pressure across Canada. In Edmonton, The Stollery’s inpatient beds are at capacity, and Doctors say the ER is backed up. ER Doctor Shazma Mithani shares what she’s seeing. Plus provincial affairs reporter Janet French talks about the concerns and politics around what we do next.
Mithani shared what it’s like as a medical professional to enter the third consecutive year of health-care crises, and what we need going forward.
This transcription has been edited for length and clarity.
Clare Bonnyman: This is the third year in a row that I feel like we’ve had a health-care crisis. Do you see an end in sight?
Shazma Mithani: I see things getting worse before they get better. We are in a situation right now with the respiratory viruses where we’re seeing it earlier than we expected, and we’re seeing it more severe than we expected. Not only in terms of the symptoms, but in terms of the number of cases that we’re seeing already in November.
And so my concern is, with this high volume of patients we are going to have a period of sustained pressure on the health-care system, and in emergency departments, and on the acute-care side with hospital admissions — both on the adult and the pediatric side. And these things take time to settle down.
Unfortunately we’re in a situation where not only do we have high volumes of patients and a higher severity of illness, we also have an already stressed health-care system.
We are dealing with staffing shortages, not only in Edmonton but across the province and across the country. And so our ability to flex up right now is extremely limited, which is why my colleagues and I are trying to get out there as much as possible to help educate the public to help mitigate the spread of viruses. To try and keep our system functioning as long as possible.
CB: You’re about to head in for another shift this afternoon. How does it feel as a doctor to be navigating another situation like this?
SM: It’s heartbreaking, it’s frustrating.
As a physician, the only thing we want to do is what’s best for our patients. We want to make sure that we can take care of them with all of the resources possible. We want to make sure that they’re comfortable — that their pain and fevers are treated, that they’re getting all the information and care that they need and that they deserve right now.
We are sometimes limited in the resources that we have to be able to do that to the best of our ability.
And as this season goes on, as people get more sick, as we start seeing a spike of COVID — because we haven’t even seen that yet — I worry that with the health-care system being as strained as it is, that we are going to be in a situation where where we won’t be able to provide the patient care that we want to and that we’re going to start having poor outcomes.
