More nurses, aides headed to overwhelmed Grace Hospital ER: health minister

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This article was published 22/11/2023 (656 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Efforts are underway to bolster staffing and stabilize wait times in the Grace Hospital emergency department, after a patient awaiting transfer to an in-patient bed died in a hallway early Saturday morning.

“When it comes to the issues at the Grace Hospital, the situation there is absolutely dire,” Premier Wab Kinew said Wednesday during question period at the legislature.

“We know that the families who have been impacted by the cases that have been reported on deserve to see improvement immediately and deserve to have answers.”

Staff at the St. James hospital have found themselves overwhelmed by patients in recent weeks, with dozens of people reportedly languishing in hallways — sometimes for more than a week at a time.

Health officials confirmed the person who died over the weekend spent 33 hours in the hallway after being triaged, assessed and treated. The death is under review, but has not been deemed a critical incident.

Kinew, who campaigned on addressing the ailing health-care system during the recent provincial election, assured the legislative assembly the NDP government is working on “short, medium and long-term solutions” in emergency rooms across Manitoba.

The pledge failed to satisfy Tyndall Park MLA Cindy Lamoureux, who used her first question-period appearance as interim Liberal leader to grill the premier and Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara.

“It is heartbreaking hearing the experience that the Grace Hospital and many families have had to face because of the wait times to see a doctor,” she said, adding there is “no excuse not to take action immediately.”

“For all the promises this government has made, we have yet to see any timeline…. Walk us through it.”

Asagwara, who has been briefed on the hallway death, said measures are already underway to deploy additional staff to the Grace ER, including nurses and health-care aides.

The supplementary staff are being reassigned from elsewhere in the hospital and other sites within the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, the health minister said.

“We are going to take some additional steps in the next couple of days, actually, to announce what our strategies around supporting the Grace and other sites is going to look like,” Asagwara said.

Asked whether the province may consider bringing in third-party support from outside the health-care system, Asagwara said the province must “explore every option and all opportunities to strengthen capacity here in our province, and certainly at sites like the Grace.”

Support staff from the Canadian Red Cross were utilized at various times during the COVID-19 pandemic to help fulfil urgent needs and address staffing shortages at Manitoba hospitals.

While the Grace has reduced its overall staff vacancy rate by 40 per cent in the last year, it continues to operate with an 11 per cent deficit in the number of ER nurses, the WRHA said in a statement.

“Staffing challenges remain an issue across the health-care system. More staff are needed across the system to increase the number of beds available for patients who need them, and improve patient flow,” the statement said.

“A majority of treatment spaces in emergency and urgent care across the city are often filled with patients waiting for beds to open up, resulting in longer wait times for patients seeking care.”

The health authority noted it is grateful for health-care staff who “continue to step up day in and day out to provide safe, compassionate care to patients with the resources available to them.”

Darlene Jackson, president of the Manitoba Nurses Union, warned if circumstances at the Grace are not swiftly and thoroughly addressed, the issues will continue to compound.

“The staff are exhausted, the workload is unsustainable and nurses just do not feel they are being given the ability to provide the care they need to provide,” she told the Free Press.

“We have to find the ability to move those admitted patients, who are on stretchers for days at a time.… Whatever it takes, get some beds open and get those patients out of the emergency departments.”

Jackson, whose resumé includes more than three decades of nursing experience, said a healthy emergency department should typically have patients placed into in-patient beds within roughly four hours of their arrival.

“We are, however, in a situation where I can almost guarantee you it never happens,” she said. “It’s got to be very clear that all front-line staff are doing everything they can to provide care under impossible circumstances.”

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca