Working as a doctor in a hospital can be unpredictable; Sept. 13, 2016 was one of those unforgettable days for Dr. Tarek Razek.
He was making his rounds at the Montreal General Hospital when he was called to treat victims of a mass shooting at Dawson College.
“My initial memory is the disbelief, that this was really happening and then the growing realization that this was actually happening,” said Razek.
Dr. Razek and his team treated 14 patients from the fatal shooting, 10 years ago.
READ MORE: Dawson College remembers 10th anniversary of deadly shooting
It’s a day he remembers all too well.
Psychiatrist Dr. Nadia Szkrumelak went to work at the General on her day off.
She felt connected to the event because her daughter was a student at Dawson College at the time, although she was not in school that day.
READ MORE: Peace garden marks fifth anniversary of Dawson College shooting
Dr. Szkrumelak helped patients deal with the stress.
“When you’re 18, you don’t really want to go see a shrink,” Dr. Szkrumelak said.
“So, I think we reached to family members and encouraged their kids to come and consult.”
Dr. Razek said a lot has been done to improve response times since then, but the system is still not perfect.
He’s concerned about ambulances quickly reaching emergency rooms.
“We really struggle with transport in our system for critical, trauma and things like this,” said Razek.
“It’s still makes me quite a little bit unnerved at our lack of ability and our larger network around us here to bring people into the system so we can do what we do well.”
He added the infrastructure at Montreal General, which serves trauma victims in half of western Quebec, is not up to par.
“Somehow we still manage to get the job done, but it’s a huge struggle to get that job done in the infrastructure that we have, in this institution especially,” said Razek.
“That’s a real continuous drain, it’s fatiguing.”
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