A “garage with curtains.”
That’s how a New Brunswick woman described the hospital unit her 88-year-old grandmother was placed in at a Fredericton hospital while she was “confused, frightened, and utterly vulnerable.”
Health officials confirmed the unit is a former ambulance bay, with Premier Susan Holt calling the situation “terrible.”
In the open letter addressed to Holt, Katarina Lekborg wrote that her grandmother, Theresa, became acutely ill last Friday and was ultimately taken to the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital.
The letter, posted on Wednesday night, detailed how her grandmother was laying on a stretcher.
“Premier Holt, I need to be honest: this is not a unit. It is legitimately the garage with curtains,” wrote Lekborg.
“There is no bathroom. No running water. No sink to wash hands. She eats inches from the commode she must use to relieve herself. There is no privacy, a tattered curtain with holes. No doors.
“The lights are relentless, on all day and all night. There are no windows, no way to tell the time of day. Paper thin ‘walls’; the noise never stops.”
Global News has reached out to Lekborg for an interview.
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On Thursday, Holt said she and the province’s health minister, John Dornan, have been in touch with Lekborg.
Dornan said the unit opened just over a year ago as a temporary response to overcrowding. He added it’s the only unit of that kind in the province that he’s aware of.
“It’s not acceptable. It wasn’t acceptable a year ago, it wasn’t acceptable five years ago. And this is why we ran for government,” said Dornan.
Holt told reporters the situation is “terrible” but that the alternative would be worse: no care.
“If that MASH unit hadn’t been transitioned by Horizon (Health Network), then people would be outside in the parking lot. They would be beyond the waiting room. We already know of the stories of people in supply closets,” she said.
The Green Party of New Brunswick Leader David Coon posted a photo of the unit earlier this week on Facebook to bring attention to the issue.
“Patients stuck in the former ambulance bay for days. Long days and nights of the medical staff. We need meaningful action now,” he wrote.
Lekborg happens to be a registered nurse. She wrote in her open letter that the situation at the hospital violates all the fundamentals in care she learned.
“This environment is unsafe, unethical, and unhygienic. It places patients at heightened risk of infection, injury, and cognitive decline. It is disorienting to a healthy person, let alone someone in delirium,” she wrote.
The New Brunswick Nurses Union, of which Lekborg is a member, agrees.
“It is not better than no care at all,” said union president Paula Doucet, in reference to the premier’s comments.
“Putting a patient in an ambulance bay is not care. That is actually sweeping the problem off to the side without actually dealing with it.”
Lekborg wrote in her letter, which has been shared nearly 6,000 times on Facebook, that her grandmother’s experience demands immediate action.
The nurses’ union is calling for an end to the unit’s use.
“I would hope it is the only one across this province, but I would also hope that the administrators and government would close this down very quickly,” said Doucet.
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