Is overcrowding at Peace Arch Hospital at crisis point?
Dr. John Todd, a general surgeon at the hospital, says the facility is “bursting at the seams” – and as a result, “nurses are in despair and patients are being neglected.”
Peace Arch News contacted Fraser Health for comment Monday, but received limited response at first.
“This is news?” said communications leader Bonnie Irving. “How many times have you reported this story?”
Characterizing Fraser Health’s initial response as “denial,” Todd said crowding of the emergency department was so bad last weekend that patients waiting to be examined or admitted to beds in the hospital filled the hallways around the department.
“We certainly do not have an adequate facility for taking care of sick people,” he said. “We don’t have adequate resources to care for the people coming to us.”
Subsequent response from Fraser Health spokesperson Roy Thorpe-Dorward Tuesday acknowledged “there is no dispute” there has been congestion at the hospital, which he said is partly attributable to the usual higher winter demand for services extending into springtime.
But Fraser Health is engaged in a number of initiatives to reduce overcrowding of hospitals across the system, including freeing beds by improving the ability of seniors and patients with chronic conditions to receive care in their homes and improving placement of long-term care patients in alternative facilities, he said.
“(Peace Arch) staff and physicians are doing the best job they can to improve patient flow,” Thorpe-Dorward said, noting that “overflow beds” are opened and closed in hallways as needed to relieve the emergency department, and patients are triaged so people with acute needs are seen first.
“People are receiving excellent quality care in these beds,” he said, noting Fraser Health is ensuring care meets community needs. “People are receiving proper care at all times.
“Does this mean there is a bed for every person that comes into the hospital? If that’s your measure, then the answer is no, but that’s not our measure.”
Todd said the 22 admitted patients in the department and the hallways over last weekend included cases of considerable severity.
“I had two gastro-intestinal bleeds,” he said. “When you see these people in a hallway, how do you do a rectal exam? You can’t.
“I was examining one patient sitting up in a chair in the hallway… He had an acutely inflamed appendix, which I subsequently removed in the OR.”
Todd said the lack of beds for patients at the hospital was having a serious effect on the morale of nursing staff.
“We are sure to have nurses resigning as a result of this,” he said, adding that a member of the staff had discussed handing in a resignation this past weekend.
He quoted the staff member as telling him: “There are better places to work at – I can’t put up with this anymore.”
Todd’s comments echo statements from local resident Dayna Bowman, who said in a Peace Arch News article last week that her 73-year-old mother had waited four days on a gurney in the hallway outside emergency before being found a bed in the fifth floor ACE (acute care for the elderly) unit.
Bowman said her mother, who suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, had been fearful and almost delirious because she had been unable to get sleep in the hallway.
At the time, Bowman said her frustration was exacerbated by the fact her mother was lying in a hospital hallway during a federal election campaign in which many local candidates were claiming health as a priority.
“We have all these bloody politicians yammering about the importance of health care – why aren’t they going to the hospitals right now, touring them and doing something about it?” she said.
She later wrote in an email that her questions remained, even though a bed had been found for her mother.
“As one of the nurses told me, ‘the population in White Rock-South Surrey has increased dramatically while the number of beds at the only hospital in the area has virtually remained the same.’”
And she remained concerned by remarks from nursing staff – who spoke only on the condition of anonymity – that the situation has been worsened by the hospital’s emphasis on a new maternity ward, and by patients flocking to the hospital from other areas.
“In an area that’s demographic is overwhelmingly senior, the politicians chose to refit and upgrade the maternity ward instead of investing that money in geriatric care,” she wrote. “I would like to know why the people who have worked their entire life, paid taxes and raised families are not being given the quality care they earned.”
Todd said Bowman’s experience at the hospital is “not uncommon.”
He said he feels that the emphasis on maternity beds and patients from other areas coming to the hospital have been factors in the current situation.
Commenting on the hospital’s new maternity ward, he said “a group of people wanted to do this, and perhaps they did, and it’s meeting a need – but other things have fallen by the wayside.”
“Certainly the administration is aware of this and, yes, we are taking steps to end up expanding the emergency department,” he said.
“But this facility is bursting at the seams.”
“It all comes down to budget,” he said.
Todd said he has also heard that between 60 and 65 per cent of patients coming to the hospital are from north of Highway No. 10.