“Unless we address things quickly, this is going to get worse.”

Ominous words from Dr. Bill Sevcik, the head of the Emergency Room at the University of Alberta Hospital on Wednesday. The remarks came after an internal email from the Chief to his staff, asking them to help ease the wait times in his emergency room, which he says are the worst they have been since 2010. In some cases, patients are waiting up to 8 hours.

“The last 6 months or so we've seen some real challenges, the increase population growth coming into the province,” says Dr. Sevcik

In the email, the doctor asks his physicians and nurses perform a quick exam or interview on patients in the triage area of the waiting room.  He acknowledges that it’s not an ideal situation for patients or staff but says there are not a lot of alternatives.

“It's not ideal at all, the nurses are under a lot of pressure, the paramedics are under a lot of pressure, it's uncomfortable to be out there, we don't have the rooms that we're used to.”

Other doctors in the U of A emergency room share his concerns.

“You never catch up in emergency medicine,” says Brian Rowe, an ER doctor at the U of A, “There's a certain kind of pressure that exists because you can never finish your job." 

He says that when he finished his shift at 1:00 on Wednesday morning, there were approximately 30 patients in the waiting room.

Both doctors point to a shortage of long-term care beds and family physicians in the province as the reason for the ER crunch.

"We know we've got long-term patients occupying about 20 percent of the beds in these hospitals right now," says Dr. Rowe. 

 Alberta’s Health Minister says the province is doing all it can.

"In a very short period of time we're increasing the number of long term care beds, we're moving acute care people into those long term care beds, opening up opportunities creating transition beds. We're doing all we can in the short term we'll do more things in the long term,” says Stephen Mandel.

In a written statement, Alberta Health Services says 77 continuing care beds have been opened in the Edmonton Zone in the past month, and 140 more will be opened across the province by the end of December.

Doctors are expected to meet with AHS executives on December 18th to discuss their concerns.

 

With files from Veronica Jubinville