The Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre’s surgical treatment clinic will resume its normal schedule on Wednesday following Friday night’s air conditioning malfunction.
The malfunction caused temporary high humidity levels in the original part of the health centre.
As a precaution, most scheduled, non-emergency surgical procedures were cancelled over the past few days to allow for the re-sterilization and replacement of any instruments, supplies, equipment and linens that could compromise patients’ safety.
According to the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH), sterilized equipment needs to be maintained at specific levels of temperature and humidity.
The air conditioning issue was resolved at 1 a.m. Saturday.
“RVH apologizes for any inconvenience resulting from the cancellation of non-emergency procedures, but patient safety is our highest priority and we will always err on the side of caution,” RVH president and CEO Janice Skot said in a statement.
“While this situation impacted RVH’s scheduled surgeries, it’s important to note that there has been no impact on most of our patients.”
RVH says it’s working with physicians to reschedule all patients affected by this delay.