Saskatoon nurses at St. Paul’s Hospital raised the red flag Monday after the emergency room became so overcapacity that they deemed it unsafe.
Saskatchewan Union of Nurses president Tracy Zambory said a patient went into cardiac arrest while in the waiting room and nurses couldn’t get the patient into the back of the emergency room because the hospital was over full.
“The registered nurses there felt they had no other choice than to evoke some safety issues that they had,” Zambory said.
The ‘stop the line’ system was implemented by nurses, which is part of the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s violence prevention and mitigation plan, and allows staff to report unsafe or violent incidents to a manager or supervisor, who then has to follow-up regarding the incident.
Zambory said management and occupational health and safety did come down and listen after the stop the line system was implemented, but noted that some of the measures brought forward to fix the issue were in contravention.
“The ‘stop the line’ was a desperate attempt for the registered nurses who didn’t know what else to do. They’d been pushed that far, to put that kind of call out. It has not done anything to alleviate the situation.”
Zambory made it clear that no nurse walked out of St. Paul’s Hospital, noting that they can’t refuse to give care.
She said this is nothing new in that hospital, saying beds are having to be placed in hallways and waiting rooms, resulting in people having to wait hours, and possibly even days for care.
“This situation has only gotten worse since yesterday and continues on this morning,” she said Tuesday.
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Zambory called the Saskatoon Capacity Pressure Action Plan an “abysmal failure.”
“Everything that they announced in there was actually old news. It has not translated to the front line, and it’s only continued to get worse at St. Paul’s emergency, throughout the hospital, and in other areas of health-care in Saskatoon.”
The capacity pressure action plan, which was announced in November 2023, listed a range of actions that aim to improve conditions in Saskatoon’s hospitals, with steps being implemented anywhere between 30 days and six months from the announcement.
“We really are calling upon the health authority, the government, to do something that actually is going to translate to the front line and isn’t some sort of cobbled together action plan that is old news, some of it before COVID-19, that has never translated to the front line.”
Zambory said the emergency room was the “canary in the coal mine,” and that other aspects of health care are facing issues as well.
She said a system-wide approach is needed to address this overcapacity issue.
Another hospital in the city, Saskatoon City Hospital, faced an emergency room closure on Jan. 2 due to lack of staffing, but Zambory said she couldn’t see Saskatchewan’s second largest emergency room ever closing its doors for any amount of time.
“Our registered nurses are there wanting to give care, but it’s become untenable. So we should never think that’s the only way to solve an issue, is to actually lock the doors. If that’s where we are headed, that’s not the right thing to do.”
She said too many people in Saskatoon and the surrounding area are reliant on that hospital, saying something else needs to happen, but it needs to happen right now.
“We can’t wait any longer for something to happen that is going to actually start to make a difference on the front line.”
She said an instantaneous fix is not possible at this point, saying there is too much damage to the system, but said frontline nurses need to be involved in the conversation on how to fix it.
Global News has reached out to SHA and received a statement.
“The Saskatchewan Health Authority acknowledges that current hospital capacity pressures create a difficult environment for patients who are seeking care in our emergency departments. This is why we launched the Saskatoon Capacity Pressure Action Plan, to address the immediate pressures facing hospital capacity in Saskatoon.”
“The SHA thanks the public for its support and patience with our care teams as they continue to work on addressing capacity issues. We also extend our appreciation to all staff, paramedics and physicians for their continued dedication and commitment to providing safe patient care,” SHA said.
Global News’ Easton Hamm sat down with SHA’s vice-president of Integrated Saskatoon Health John Ash, who said they are focusing on implementing many of the 90-day actions outlined in the action plan.
Ash said some of those actions include hiring for positions, many are within the St. Paul’s emergency department.
He added that they are looking to add more capacity in primary care in the community to help prevent patients from needing to go to the emergency room.
“That work is progressing. In addition to that we’re looking even more proactively forward in looking at our bed needs analysis, so what are the types and number of beds that we need in the system, from an acute care capacity as well as a long-term care capacity,” Ash said.
When asked to respond to Zambory’s comment about the action plan being an “abysmal failure,” Ash said in his conversations with health-care staff, those nurses have recognized that is the right work to do.
“Some of these actions that we’re taking are going to take a little bit of time to change the system.”
Ash clarified that nurses didn’t actually “stop the line” on Monday, instead undergoing an occupational health and safety unsafe work process.
“We knew that the underlining cause for their concern was their moral distress in regards to not being able to place a patient in a timely manner to a bed.”
He said they are doing a detailed investigation into the matter, adding that the patient in question was quickly assessed and was seen by a physician in minutes after being triaged.
Ash addressed the beds being placed in hallways and waiting rooms, saying capacity pressures are being seen across the country.
“I think in all when an urgent patient needs a care environment they are provided that by some very hard-working and capable staff in our emergency departments.”
He said in Monday’s case, occupational health and safety gave recommendations to potentially address the root cause of the problem and that it was determined that staff were within their rights to call for that process.
“We will continue to focus on the work that we’ve identified in the Saskatoon Capacity Pressure Action Plan because we know that’s the right work.”
He noted that this was a difficult time for health staff and that many of these measures that are being implemented take time.
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