The London Children’s Hospital saw a “historic high” level of emergency department visits and staff shortages in May, a trend seen across the province.
“It’s very similar to Ottawa,” said Dr. Rod Lim, medical director in the pediatric emergency department at the Children’s Hospital. “We are having a huge increase in the number of visits that we’re having in the emergency department. We’re up almost 80 per cent compared to our historic May volumes.”
According to London Health Science Centre officials, the Children’s Hospital emergency department is seeing about 180 visits per day with wait times averaging between three and four hours.
The rise in emergency visits, Lim said, is due to children contracting viruses normally seen in the winter months, such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus.
“We are seeing these cases in the month of June, which is something I’ve never seen before in my career,” Lim said.
He added that the increasing numbers are also due to the Children’s Hospital “not being immune” to nursing shortages seen across the country. Exhausted health professionals, working with limited resources and location barriers in families accessing doctors also play a part in the record-high data, according to Lim.
“The rise has impacted almost every facet of our operations,” he said.
But it’s not just the London region that has been dealing with a recent influx of patients.
The trend is occurring at other Ontario children’s hospitals, as CHEO in Ottawa, Toronto’s SickKids and McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton were busier than normal in May.
However, Lim said the passion and creativity seen from his fellow health-care colleagues in trying to manage the rise in visits across the province fills him with pride, and addressed the community’s perseverance as well.
“We have all been dealing with quite an extraordinary situation over the past two years,” Lim said. “We hope that the public is patient with us as we try to get through these volumes.”