Montreal hospitals urge people with non-urgent issues to stay away from ERs

A tough two weeks are projected as Quebec emergency rooms dealing with surging COVID-19 cases and more.

The province reported a 28-patient jump in COVID hospitalizations Sunday, with more than 2,000 people being treated for the virus.

Montrealers are urged to avoid swamped ERs, which are running at over 100 per cent capacity, as just under 13,000 Quebec health care workers were absent from work because of COVID-19.

“This is having a humongous impact on the delivery of care. We’re always short in the emergency rooms and departments in general of nurses and unit coordinators and personnel. But I can tell you that this wave is even worse than the previous, for that matter. We’re always running shorter. People obviously at the six wave are very tired of all this,” explained Dr. François de Champlain, Emergency Physician and Trauma Team Leader at MUHC.

“People are overworked. They’re tired. When you’re tired, personnel can do medical errors easier. So it has a ripple effect where we have to be very concerned about that to a point where we cannot deliver quality care in this context.”

According to Montreal-based research centre CIRANO, it’s estimated nearly 60,000 Quebecers are newly infected with COVID every day.

“COVID has always been an issue. It’s becoming a bigger issue now. Our COVID wards are filling up, our numbers are inclining, and our patients are getting sicker again. We’re getting also sick patients for other medical or other reasons. So we’re not only just getting COVID sick, we’re getting all types of sick,” explained Melanie Jade Boulerice, an emergency nurse and owner of Nomadic Nurse Agency.

“I’m seeing sick calls after sick calls because people are just like, ‘I can’t cope. I need my peace. I need to I need to rest. I need to get through this.’ It’s not easy anymore. It’s not, you know, the job is becoming more mechanical,” she added.

Those with significant trauma, psychological distress, sudden chest pains, shortness of breath, or signs of stroke-like difficulty talking are encouraged to seek emergency care, while others are asked to call the province’s health line, 8-1-1, to speak to a nurse since those on the ground have become overwhelmed.

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“Just by this massive amount of people that are getting COVID, there will be a small percentage and even this number will be smaller,” added Dr. de Champlain. “The absolute number of people that may require an admission and even ICU care has the potential of being greater than other waves. And that is a real concern.

“And obviously, whenever we hear this, it’s about capacity. It’s about, you know, operations being cancelled. It’s by delivery of care. So collateral damage really created by the lack of in-hand mission beds and ICU beds.

“We’re also seeing a surge in other respiratory viruses, such as influenza, the flu, which we generally don’t see really at this time of the year, which again, complicate things because we have a lot of people coming with flu-like symptoms and therefore they need to be isolated until we have a COVID test,” added Dr. de Champlain.