‘Worst holiday season I’ve ever seen,’ shell-shocked Grace ER doc says

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This article was published 03/01/2025 (650 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg hospital emergency departments were overcrowded and staff were overwhelmed during the holidays, people working on the front lines say.

“This is the worst holiday season I’ve ever seen,” Grace Hospital emergency physician Dr. Doug Eyolfson told the Free Press, adding colleagues working at the city’s two other ERs were experiencing the same thing.

“There was no option to look for a department that had a shorter wait time,” he said. “People from other areas that needed to transfer someone in were having trouble finding someone to accept them. Every bed was full. The hallways were full of patients and they kept coming and coming.”

Eyolfson said the surge is not just a blip caused by seasonal flu, holiday get-togethers and winter hazards, but part of the “grey tsunami” of aging baby boomers now flooding the health-care system, something that was predicted 30 years ago.

“We’ve been under it for over 20 years and it’s just going to keep getting worse until we have more transitional bed capacity, more long-term care capacity and in-patient bed capacity,” said the former Liberal MP who will be a candidate in the next federal election in the Winnipeg West riding.

Eyolfson described conditions inside the Grace ER Monday in a social media post.

“Still 35 patients waiting to be seen, 7 waiting over 24 hours, 4 of them waiting over 30. In what universe is this normal? … someone is going to die if this is not fixed.”

Premier Wab Kinew has blamed the former Tory government for breaking the health-care system and has promised to fix it, pointing to 873 net new hires in the past year.

Emergency nurses at Health Sciences Centre reported “absolutely brutal” waits over the last 10 days, said Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson.

“It was incredibly busy with patients admitted on stretchers and nowhere to send them,” Jackson said. “It’s an issue that’s getting bigger and bigger.”

The system needs more hospital beds, transitional beds, long-term care beds, home-care services and staffing to address the “bed block” in ERs, she said.

“How do we bolster those services to ensure patients are where they should be in order for those acute-care beds to be used appropriately?” Jackson said.

Making matters worse is “misleading” wait-time information posted on the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority website, she said.

Waits may end up being much longer for many patients than what’s posted online for several reasons; patients triaged with more urgent issues are seen first, for example. And at times, people forced further back in the queue get frustrated and take it out on staff, Jackson said.

“We are seeing more and more abuse and violence towards front-line workers,” she said. “A lot of it has to do with patient and family frustration, and their inability to access health care in timely fashion.

“A wait time of 31 hours is absolutely unacceptable.”

Cheers for patients who leave unseen

A woman who contacted the Free Press Monday said she took her husband, who was unwell due to a chronic condition, to the Grace ER that day because the posted wait time was “only” nine hours.

The woman, who didn’t want her name published, said people accompanying patients were asked by staff to give up their seats to new arrivals and patients who decided to leave before being seen by a doctor were cheered by the crowd for giving up their place in the queue.

After waiting nine hours, she asked when her husband would be seen and was told the wait was going to be 31 hours. He, too, left without being seen, she said. The next day, he waited five hours before being treated at an urgent-care centre, she said.

Waiting for care in emergency departments and urgent-care centres is difficult, “especially if you are sick or in pain,” a Winnipeg Regional Health Authority spokesperson said in an email.

The online wait times for ERs and urgent care are an estimated forecast, based on the number of patients waiting to be seen as well as an algorithm created by the software used within the health-care system, the spokesperson said.

“We make sure that is clear on the myrightcare website, which states that due to rapidly changing demands and the need to see the sickest patients first, wait times may be more or less than the time displayed here.

“These wait times are meant as a guide for patients, and as situations in EDs and UCs change minute by minute, the actual wait times may also change,” the email said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca