According to the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses, emergency rooms in Saskatoon are under intense strain, leading to the deteriorating health of patients waiting for transfers to different facilities.
“They are so incredibly overcapacity,” said SUN president Tracy Zambory.
“We heard the story not that long ago about Royal University Hospital’s emergency room being 200 per cent over capacity, and come to find out that 200 per cent capacity has practically been considered their norm for weeks, months, if not even years," Zambory said.
Zambory said that patients waiting in the emergency room at City Hospital, which is not a 24-hour facility, have had to wait overnight to get transfers to RUH and St. Paul’s hospital.
“A registered nurse who is on standby has to come in and stay and give this care to people that are there because they cannot be left unattended all night long,” she said.
“What we're hearing from our members is that people that are in these emergency rooms, care is starting to suffer, their health is deteriorating because of a broken system.”
Zambory is calling on the province and Minister of Health Paul Merriman to admit there is a problem with the province’s healthcare system.
“Our members are telling us this every day, and if they're not seeing it, they need to open their eyes and look because it's happening right in front of them,” she said.
“To go on with this continual denial … it’s a dangerous way of thinking.”
CTV News is awaiting a response from the Ministry of Health.
In the province’s latest COVID-19 update, 594 people were admitted to hospital with the illness from Aug. 14 to Sept. 10, and 38 people were admitted to an intensive care unit, while an average of six people a week died from the virus.
But Zambory says COVID-19 is not the only factor.
“We also have no concrete mental health and addiction strategy,” she said.
“We also have people who've got chronic illness become acute because it's not just the emergency rooms and hospitals and rural health care facilities that are suffering from a health human resource crisis, it's also community health, community mental health, public health, home care."
On top of being overcapacity Zambory says the healthcare system is being understaffed. She is calling on the province to create a nursing task force to address the shortfalls, not only in attracting new members but also in retaining nurses.
“I'm hearing more about people who are suffering from PTSD, chronic anxiety, physical ailments, and they're not able to work and they are they're despondent — this is not what they signed on for,” she said.
“Registered nurses have tried for over three years now to be so resilient to carry the health care system, but when they keep hearing from the leadership that everything's fine and there's nothing wrong, it's very difficult to continue on.
“We cannot continue to skate by or get by or make do, because at the end of the day the people that pay for that are the public that are trying to access the system.”
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