'Drowning in patients': Alberta ER doctors concerned about resources heading into respiratory illness season

Alberta emergency room doctors are worried about a health-care system already stretched to its limits as the province heads into respiratory illness season.

“We’re really feeling the crunch in the (emergency room) and it’s only the beginning of September, we haven’t even started respiratory season, which is only going to become worse,” said Dr. Shazma Mithani, an emergency doctor in Edmonton.

Mithani says her waiting room is often packed with well over 50 people.

“People are really close to each other, they may be uncomfortable if they’re coming in with chest pain or abdominal pain, they’re sitting in a chair uncomfortable and just hoping that their turn is going to come to see a doctor,” she said.

“It is completely undignified, it’s certainly not the way we want to provide patient care.”

Outside of the emergency room, Mithani says there are often 10-15 patients stretchers in the hallways who have been released by EMS and are waiting for care.

“We’ve been over capacity throughout the entire summer, and summer tends to be a slower time in the health-care system, and so we’re already several steps behind as we’re leading up to the busiest time of the season,” she said.

“I actually am worried about how we’re going to manage that because if it’s 50 in the waiting room now, it’ll be 60 or 70 two months from now.”

Dr. Warren Thirsk, an emergency physician at the Royal Alexandra Hospital and president-elect of the Alberta Medical Association’s section of emergency medicine, said the workload for doctors is increasing progressively.

“Crushing workloads, we are drowning in patients right now and have no ability to look after everyone who comes to us in need,” Thirsk said.

“We do not have the resources that the Albertan population requires for us to look after them.”

On a typical work day, Thirsk says emergency physicians see somewhere between 20 and 30 patients.

“When we start a shift with 50 or more patients in the waiting room, which is common and typical these days, then there is no hope of seeing a percentage of our people waiting for us in the waiting room, and this leads to the long-documented wait times,” he said.

The Ministry of Health says the province is working to create a new acute care provincial health agency targeting “specialized areas of patient-centred care,” to help give Albertans access to care when they need it.

“This organization will work directly with acute care providers, including AHS and Covenant Health, to speed up access to quality care, lower wait times for emergency departments, and make sure every Albertan’s journey through the acute care system is efficient and effective,” the office of the Minister of Health said in a statement.

“AHS continues to look for creative ways to retain and build our valuable and critical workforce to address the challenges across the organization. We know more needs to be done, which is why Alberta's government is committed to working with AMA to address any changes to physician compensation, including ARP rates and after-hours compensation.”

Despite the health-care overhaul that is coming, Mithani says the system has already failed.

“We’re kind of at a point beyond return, it’s failed, and the system is no longer going to be there for people in the way that it should be,” Mithani said.

Province-wide problem

The problem isn’t isolated to Edmonton, currently, there are 12 partial or complete closures of emergency departments or acute care beds across Alberta, leaving some rural health centres to operate without any doctors.

“What I am hearing is that in the rural areas, sometimes the physician coverage is just not there,” said Marie-Therese Mageau, the president of Local 301 for the United Nurses of Alberta.

Mageau said nurses across the province are facing the pressure of packing emergency rooms, as the patient-to-nurse ratio grows higher.

“You’re just dreading the fact that you are walking into yet another shift understaffed,” she said.

Dr. Paul Parks, the president of the Alberta Medical Association, said the province should be focused on improving after-hours care compensation, not restructuring.

“If we don’t stabilize and secure the foundation, there will be nothing left to reorganize,”

“It’s got the priorities all wrong. It really is just making things more chaotic and more difficult right now.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Chelan Skulski