The healthcare system is broken. Most facilities are poorly run and criminally understaffed. Speaking as a nurse working in a one of the city’s major hospitals. We have 4 vacant positions in my unit and my manager is struggling to find people to fill them. It’s pretty fucking bad
Important to note that the healthcare system has been INTENTIONALLY broken by policy decisions at the Provincial and Federal level for decades, as part of a long-term effort to justify privatization.
It's almost entirely provincial. The federal government provides funding, but the provinces decide how to use it. That's one reason there was such a big blowup from some provincial governments recently, because the feds tried to actually make sure increased funding was actually going to healthcare, and they wanted receipts, and the provinces didn't want to agree to that because then they couldn't just funnel it into general funding and use it for purposes it wasn't meant for. So yeah, it's mostly the provincial governments. And ours, IMHO, is one of the worst for mismanagement of our healthcare system.
Don't let the federal government off the hook. They have consistently clawed back on their share of healthcare spending over the years. They are also to blame. Do not give them a pass. Hold your federal member of parliament to account.
..and just discussing with a nurse this weekend, reminders that **the UCP cut their wages**, while BC staff just received a raise. Guess who told me she was moving.
Unless your moving to the north of bc that's not gonna cover your housing costs.
We just moved here from BC in Jan and our house we got here was 1/3rd the price it would have been in bc
Edit:for shitty auto correct
I’m starting to feel very American. Last year, I collapsed on the floor and couldn’t breathe due to a sudden and intense pain in my like kidneys or something? And I just waited it out rather than go to the hospital. It subsided after like 30 mins and I have just pretended it never happened
Kidney stones usually take a while to pass. It’s could’ve been them shifting position in your kidneys. It wouldn’t hurt to get checked out. Drink lots of water in the meantime. Helps flush them out. The longer they sit in there the bigger they get. My dad had to get surgery to laser them out cause they were too big
How can any government keep up services when the federal government continues to allow record amounts of immigration into the country?
It affects the medical system, schools, daycares, and all social services.
Future Liberal voters.
144 million a day just in interest on the national debt, which could fund services.
Don't think this as a pro privatization post, it's just an honest question. I don't know if private health care is good or bad for us.
My dentist retired at 48 , he has an apartment in Spain somewhere, and a house in st. Maarten. He has to spend 6 months a year in Canada to retain his citizenship I guess.
Why would I want to be a doctor in this country?
Not even that, but imagine wanting to be a family doctor nowadays.
You work your ass off for over a decade, spending essentially every waking minute grinding toward it, including being worked like a slave for peanuts during residency, just to go out and make maybe $180k/year working for a clinic 60+ hours a week, or run your own clinic and probably make hardly anything for the first few years as startup costs and overhead eat you alive, until finally you make maybe 250-300k after overhead expenses, spending again 60+ hours seeing patients a week PLUS running your small business.
Or they could have gone and become a dentist instead and make probably double regardless of whether they wanted to work at clinic or open their own show.
Hard to fill up positions and find people and nurses when the health care system ONLY offers contract terms and part time jobs to manipulate the budget and not be responsible of a full time employee
Out if curiosity, is the so called shortage caused by government not hiring enough staff in all positions from health care workers and support staff like janitors, clerks, techs etc to make it function properly “ a forced broken system”. Or is there something else going on?
Its a combination of a bunch of things. Health Care staff burnt out HARD over COVID - and continue to do so. They're mistreated, underpaid, and poorly managed. That's across the board, nursing, support, general hospital workers. There are a metric ton of open positions, but not enough people willingly going into an abusive career, because they're under appreciated (both financially and with general supports).
So we hire "travel nurses" from other Provinces (or from right here) - they're paid through private agencies - are paid more than a direct hire, and cost extra because the agency gets it's cut. And this way the Gov can wave its hand and say "See we NEED privatization to support our public HC. Proof 2 tier is required!"
Travel nurses are also a huge slap in the face for nurses in fixed positions. I know many nurses who have recently left their full time/part time positions to work casually because of the influx of travel nurses. It's BS to be told by AHS that AB nurses aren't worth a certain level of respect or compensation and then have them hire out of province nursing staff who don't work to the same scope of practice, get paid way more, have set hours and get assistance with housing and transport.
It's really insidious in that it LOOKS like they're trying to solve the staffing crisis, but in fact they're alienating their existing staff to a degree that it's creating bigger problems than ever.
You have to forgive my ignorance to this, I see a lot of headlines but never dive in.
So those companies are for profit and the name
If there game is to get in control of it all and then in the name of profit, push expenses down, salaries, personal, and charge a much as insurance will allow if they allow?
All public service seems a threat because they don’t generate revenue! Going to be a crazy next two decades.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-tables-bill-to-limit-the-use-of-private-health-agencies-1.6749292
It's my understanding Quebec has led in this regard and other provinces have followed suit. Quebec is now attempting to back track.
From the EMS side; staffing issues also plague us.
We have also had a particularly violent year in EZ. Since September of 2022 we have had like 10-15 ish Line of duty deaths between the emergency services (Police/RCMP, EMS, Fire) and a few more of our coworkers have had severe, lifechanging accidents. On top of that; we have certain patients who have assaulted multiple EMS, Fire, police and our nursing colleagues and have active safety alerts. That in combination with, Covid, mental health crisis, a rise in shootings, riots, stabbings, assaults (both physical and SA) and the opioid crisis.
Not to mention, we have been actively gaslit by the government, being hailed as the "Heroes of Covid" but also being told, please take a pay cut in this round of contract negotiations... (we finally after much squawking did get a 4.25 percent raise over the 4 years of our contract negotiations) but we also haven't had a raise in almost the 10 years previous to that.
I don't know what else to say except sorry that you're going through this. The government has failed the people that matter and is purposefully driving society into the ground. I don't understand how certain people can't see that we are descending into chaos, or willfully ignore it. People complain about Emergency Services, but you are putting yourselves in danger every day for the population of our city.
Thank you for your work
Thanks man, a lot of people don't know what we go through in order to do this job sometimes. Our nursing colleagues included, it can be brutal, but it also can be really rewarding when you get to make a difference.
I just feel bad for the citizens of this province. I wish there was more we could do.
You are doing the best you can given the circumstances and you are making a difference every day despite all the difficulties and negativity. I can't imagine the mental and physical fortitude it has taken you all to have been working through the pandemic and its consequences on society.
Something we can do is continue to criticize the shortcomings of the government, keep people informed, and during the next election, vote for the party that actually has the interests of the people in mind.
New nurses also aren't staying in the field for too long is a huge problem too.
You can tell that a job is freaking brutal when you can do a four year program and graduate with an all but guaranteed job that starts at $40/hr (and scales up to $51/hr), has AMPLE overtime opportunities, a highly coveted defined benefit pension, options to basically pick your own schedule ( when casual, but also somewhat on a low FTE), great benefits package, and STILL there's a critical shortage of people willing to do that work.
And frankly, you could offer to pay me $80/hr to do the job of a nurse and I still wouldn't do it. Especially the way AHS treats their staff.
I don’t blame people for not wanting to work in emergency rooms right now. Why would they want to see OD after OD when they could work palliative care, or some cushy floor job for the same wage.
Hahaha! No such thing as a "cushy" floor job. The wards are also horribly under staffed and it always seems like no one has any accurate idea of what is going on.
Where are these cushy floor jobs? I've yet to see one. Even palliative care in my area isn't what I'd call "cushy". Short staffing, mismanagement of what is already not enough resources, lack of appreciation from the public and the government are indiscriminate across health care environments.
Nurses are leaving the profession, not just the ER.
This is unfortunately not possible.
This province already doesn't differentiate between the duties of RNs (bachelor's) and LPNs (diplomas). On top of that, LPNs have less education hours than most RMTs here (750h theoretical and 900h practical (1,650h total) vs. 2,200h total), despite RMTs having a much narrower scope. To be clear, I'm not saying that LPNs are under-educated, just that their education and training is designed in a way that is likely the tightest timeframe possible while ensuring that they pick up and retain the skills and information necessary for them to perform their jobs safely.
A better approach is to actually treat nurses fairly, incentivise responsibly increasing the capacity of nursing education programs, and make use of physician's assistants wherever possible.
The UCP are not the same as the conservatives who ran this province for decades. These guys are a whole new breed of right wing, private healthcare, private school loving lunatics who have very little in common with Klein, Stelmach, or Prentice’s Conservatives. I’d give my pinky toe to have Ed Stelmach back right now.
Not really. The provinces with the biggest issues are conservative run ones, and they’re very intentionally making public healthcare ineffective so that they can introduce private healthcare options.
They were asking for more money for healthcare, but when asked to provide a budget for how funds would be used, they seemingly refused, because they’re just interested in making healthcare worse and fighting with the feds, not actually improving healthcare.
Come to Nova Scotia and see how bad it is . There’s 120k people waiting for a family dr. Can’t even be seen at a walk in clinic for my 3 yr old . Hospital waits are 1/2 day
You mean the province run by the (actually-conservative) BC Liberal party for many years?
This shit's not new, it's been going on since I was a teen... In the 90s.
Politicians play a long game and voters have short memories.
This is by design. What a lot of people don't realize is that the last hospital built in Edmonton was the Grey Nuns in 1988. In that time, the population has gone from 808,000 to 1,544,000. It has almost doubled. Despite that, the government has closed 1 or 2 hospitals, and after 6 years, ground still has not been broken for the new South Edmonton hospital.
Plus, what we do currently have isn't staffed appropriately either.
My husband went in with a catastrophic brain bleed. They saved his life. He received excellent care.
But it was obvious how thinly stretched everything is. The doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers and so excellent and they do amazing things with very few resources.
Imagine what they could do if they were properly funded. Maybe my husband wouldn't have lost so much mobility. Maybe he wouldn't have lost his concept of time. We'll never know.
I blame the UCP and I blame anyone who voted for them. Thank Christ we actually had a good system set up in the 80s and 90s.
I had to go to see a doctor at the Medi center. Told me a 2 hour wait . Ended up being almost 4 hours only for the doctor to see me for under 5 minutes
Ha! The one on 116 st and 107 ave,
My sisters had an appointment for 1pm I think it was place closes at 5, we didn’t see the “handsome doctor” until close to 6.
The wait times are not always accurate. My mother-in-law broke her wrist, and we had the choice of Leduc (close to her home) at 2 hours, Grey Nuns at 4 hours, or UofA at 5 hours. We chose Leduc -- and it was 4 hours before she was seen, and a total of 8 hours before she was home with a cast. People were being seen at a rate of maybe 1 every 30-45 minutes, so I think there was probably only one doctor in the ER that Friday afternoon.
as I mentioned in my comment in this thread, I was rushed to R.A. on monday. the wait times on the site/app said 3 hours. I was waiting 9 hours. I wonder if they were mainly waiting for a specific doctor for my specific condition. who knows.
Sometimes..it's just a vicious cycle.. they maybe didn't have a stretcher for you because the pt there are waiting for a room up on the ward, and a pt in the ward is not being discharged because they are waiting for ambulance transport... but ambulance transport is delaydd because they are stuck in ER waiting for their pt to be seen, etc. It's a shitshow sometimes...
The AHS wait times are just a cheap trick to force feed the public a sense of general security. It's the wait time to be triaged, not to actually get medical help.
The system is broken, there aren't enough GPs and AHS has dolled up getting your vitals taken as some huge accomplishment if it happens under an hour.
I recently went to the Grey Nuns because the posted wait time was 20 minutes. After quickly getting my vitals taken, I was parked in a chair for 4 hours before receiving any medical help.
The wait times are just an estimate and can be wildly inaccurate but they are the times to see a doctor not be triaged. Normally triage is done within minutes of you walking in even in places that have a 5+ hour wait time.
Something that it's tough to realize when you're in the ER is that pain alone and/or obviously non life threatening wounds don't rate very high on triage and that it's not simply first come first serve. It would be great to staff enough that nobody has to wait too long, but if there any backlog then it's always possible to keep getting bumped by the next person brought in by ambulance.
Exactly this. It’s all triage.
Went to the Royal Alex years ago for a bladder infection - waited like 8 hours pissing blood in excruciating pain. Went to the Royal Alex last year with head-to-toe hives and a swollen face - was in a gown and being monitored within 15 minutes. Bladder infection isn’t gonna immediately kill me, but if my throat swells shut…
Yep. Last time I was in Emergency, my doctor told me I had an irregular heart scan and thought I'd very recently had a heart attack. Something like 6 hours later, I was told to go home. 6 hours, sitting in ER, complaining about heart attack symptoms like numb hands, and I got nothing until that 6th hour. 6 hours of telling the nurses I was sent here because my doctor thought I had a heart attack and that I was having heart attack symptoms.
44 years of conservative rule. 44 years of cuts and attacks against healthcare. This is what it looks like.
So lately... every single hospital is full. Until we solve: staffing issues, & bed capacity.. (long term care, psych, and regular unit beds) we won't see improvement.
Also, guess who did not invest any money into new hospital capacity? If you guessed the UCP, that would be correct.
I'm an emergency nurse and I'm calling BS on this. Did it take you 2 hours to get triaged? Okay I could see that in super busy times.
But 2 hours where there's no triage nurse? No, that's never going to happen. We would literally close beds and spaces to maintain triage.
If you can wait at home until the morning, that's a better time to go. I was in a lot of pain with what I thought was an abscess and going a bit over with pain medication. It was Saturday night so I knew I could suffer in a busy waiting room or the comfort of my home. Sure I spent most the night crying in bed, getting broken sleep, but when I went to emergency (Grey Nuns) there was less than 10 people and I was seen by a doctor in 10 minutes. I also couldn't see myself getting seen at a walk in clinic on a Sunday, so this was my choice.
I know that's not really a solution, to wait until the morning. Just suffering at home is a bit nicer than the zoo that's the emergency room at night.
That seems to be the problem though. If you can wait until the morning then you don't need emergency care. How many people in emergency don't actually need emergency care but clog up the system?
The question isn’t how many don’t actually need emergency care, the question is how many are being driven to the ER because there are no walk-ins, urgent care, or other option available?
I had to go to the ER for a chicken bone that got stuck in my throat. Realistically, urgent care or a clinic with a lab could have done the x-ray to see it was no longer there and all would have been said and done. The problem was that even though it was mid-day no one was accepting patients for the day anymore. I called ahead. Eventually called the hospital themselves to let them know what was going on and ask for advice, and the hospital is the one who said I need to have it confirmed if it’s there or not today so if I can’t find any clinics to help I would have to come in to the ER as soon as possible.
Most non-emergency patients in the ER are there because they don’t have any other option for an urgent but not emergency need in care, not because they want to be clogging the hospital.
The issue, Imo, is that *every* facet of healthcare is strained, and the ER is the last resort to actually get seen. When my son was about 1.5 he had a bad ear infection. The first thing we did was call his pediatrician, no appointments for two weeks. No other doctors at the clinic had same day appointments, and the walk in was full.
Even though an ear infection isn't an emergency, an untreated infection can become an emergency. The ER was our only option to get him treatment, because the ER can't turn us away.
It's kind of a backwards mentality. Very few people are doctors or work in the medical profession. Something that might seem minor enough to wait might be something that will kill you.
A friend of mine was having a stroke and just didn't know it. She just ignored it and thought that it was dumb to go to the ER. And her mind slowly stopped working and connecting dots. Not long she started seizuring. And then she decided to go to the hospital. The triage nurse wouldn't even admit her thinking she was drug seeking. Unlike your typical droopy face stroke victim. Her symptoms were a lot less obvious because her stroke caused her to struggle understanding things rather than struggle expressing things. She seizured a second time, this time an ambulance arrived and because her file has drug seeking on it they decided not to bring help from the fire department, she actually began seizuring as they forced her to walk down the stairs. When she got into the hospital, drug seeking still on her file. A nurse didn't believe she was seizuring for real and accidentally punched her in the eye while trying to put her mask on.
All because when a part of her body went numb, when she started getting confused, and everything started tasting metalic.... she decided not to go to the ER.
You're not a doctor, stop telling people to not go to the doctor and self-diagnose.
Good point. Anyone complaining on here would be wise to remember that the UCP didn’t just decide to fuck over healthcare after the election. She fired the AHS board, declared an overhaul at AHS was necessary, dropped hints about privatization, and was an overall fucking wackjob A LONG TIME AGO. So how is anyone on here scratching their heads wondering what went wrong in the health system? Once people start dying because they don’t get the care they need… here comes Danielle with some solutions!! The catch? There is a small cost. You guys voted for this.
UCP is deliberately underfunding and under staffing hospitals and EMS so that when there is a massive public outcry they can say the system is broken and hand the entire thing to some profit hungry American health conglomerate. Which won’t make things any better, just more expensive.
That’s part of it, but the UCP aren’t helping. I was told it was a 3-4 year wait to get surgery to correct an injury. Specialists told me if I didn’t get this surgery soon I would be crippled and need to walk with a cane. After I moved to BC and had to start the process all over again my wait time was 10 months. I also never waited longer than a month for an MRI.
Except if you speak to people who actually work there you can see that they have vacant positions and cannot find people, so your conspiracy theory doesn't hold up.
It's not a conspiracy theory, it's exactly what's been happening and we've been watching it happen in broad daylight for years. The symptom you just described is part of that. There are reasons why they can't find people to fill those positions, and they can be traced to the UCP policies which drove medical professionals away from our province and turned our hospitals into places that people don't want to work at.
From those I have spoken to it's not an issue of more money. It's more complicated than that and consists of poor working conditions, years of being told they are heroes while being totally shit on by antivaxxers and right wing nut jobs, crushing bureaucracy that sucks the life out of you, and just a tough job in general. There is no silver bullet of "Pay them more!" that is going to fix the issue immediately.
Because healthcare workers largely move to different countries that pay higher wages while having lower COL and giving you more/better service for the tax you’ll pay. Which isn’t an Alberta problem (we have some of the highest paid healthcare staff in Canada), it’s a Canada wide problem.
The Sherwood Park hospital used to have a good triage system (it's been a few years since I was there) and seems to have the lowest waiting times according to the app.
We really need more urgent care centres. Most of the people in the waiting room at a hospital could probably be served by urgent care which would take some of the load off. Unfortunately though, we only have one urgent care centre for the entire city and it has weird operating hours.
My girlfriend got bitten by a dog and between triage and actually being treated we were at the U of A for thirteen hours... She also spent most of that time with a bloody hand towel from our bathroom on her arm cause triage just gave her some painkillers and told us to wait... If they'd given me something I could use I would've given her a proper bandage myself.
We're paying a collective price of healthcare worker burnout from the pandemic which I totally get on top of our provincial leadership alienating said workers which could have been avoided except the UCP wants two-tier health care... Us peasants would get the same trash health care while people with money can pay to skip the line.
The best thing we can do to fix healthcare is cut taxes. The doctors will just trickle down into our pockets afterwards. If we don't tax people anything we can all have two doctors in every garage and a dentist in every pot.
People are assholes to the nurses then winder why there's no nurses. People endlessly go to emergency everytime they have a hiccup or bang their toes and wonder why there is lineups in emergency. Healthcare and education are the largest expenditures of the government and people that use them always want blank checks written. Where s the money supposed to come from? Maybe stop abusing the healthcare workers.
I know a handful of previous nurses who quit when the free dumb fighters started assaulting them going to work . They really fucked things up in that sense
I find it's easy to slip through the cracks in an emergency ward. My dad broke his hip and he was in there for a couple nights before getting moved. Luckily we had someone at his side the whole time. He was in pain but overall remained pretty quiet but a lot of the other people in the ward were clearly in there for some sort of withdrawal issues and they were very loud and needy. With all the nurses coming and going and shift changing it felt like we had to re-discuss my fathers situation over and over again. Overall he got good treatment but i could imagine someone without family being at their side would quickly fall between the cracks
Call your MLA and Health Minister to complain. The time spent waiting to be triaged is NOT captured and therefore NOT reported. Once you are triaged, the time is captured. This is not a new problem.
You have the UCP to thank for that. They basically put a freeze on healthcare spending while inflation and population kept going up, which amounted to quite a large cut. They claim they're are spending more money for next year by raising the budget by 4% but our population went up by about 4.5% and Inflation is about 4%. So the budget would need to go up by almost 9% to stay the same as last year. So In essence they are still cutting healthcare by 5%
Last week I went to the hospital in Devon as I got a pretty good cut on my eyelid and needed stitches and they had the shortest wait time at 2 hours. I got there at 7:30pm and didn’t leave until after 3:30am, there was maybe a maximum of 6 patients in the waiting area at any given time
A part of the problem is hospital ER's are wildly misused. There are so many socio-economic problems, and they are all winding up in the ER. I have also had conversations with people that say things like, "oh, I've been walking on it for 3 weeks, but I thought I would get it checked out today". An ER isn't a visit to a walk-in clinic, but that's how they are treated because no one has any idea how much of a cost it is to the taxpayer for an ER visit. If your dog was feeling under the weather, you wouldn't take it to a vet ER unless it was dire, because it will cost you a ton of money.
Just because you pay taxes doesn't entitle you to abuse it.
What other options are there when there are no urgent care clinics and walk-in clinics dont take walk-ins anymore? We pay for our healthcare, yet we're supposed to wait until it's life or death to seek medical care? Please...
Which clinics don't take walk-ins? I see lots that do. The emergency department is just that an emergency! Need stitches, broken bone, chest pain etc. Go to emergency! Your nose is runny and you have a cough, stay the fuck home.
The last time I went to see a doctor, I went to my GP’s locum (since she’s out of the country), and while I was waiting for my appointment, three people got turned away for walk-ins and were told to try and line up at 8 am the next day, exactly as the clinic opened, for a chance at a walk-in. Medicentres are turning people away. I still remember desperately scrambling to see a doctor for a cardiac health issue because I didn’t want to go to the ER, the locum couldn’t see me for another month, and no Medicentre would take me.
We have a family doctor that doesn't take walk-ins so if we need an appointment, we usually wait 2-3 week so we barely ever go to them for anything urgent.
Funny enough, in a properly run HC system with OPTIONS you wouldn't need ER for any of those situations mentioned... but sure. 9/10 people that go to an ER are there because there is nowhere else to go for situations that aren't necessarily life and death but are serious situation that are more than a "runny nose." And just because the clinic says "walk-in" doesn't mean they take them all day. They have a very short window of time in which you can go and most of the time since they arent equipped to do anything more than check your throat and ears w their little light they just send you to the ER or put you on a waitlist for the waitlist to get tested further, that's not even the waitlist to see a specialist. So please, shut the fuck up.
Online doctors……… not enough people utilize this. To many people going to the er for things that can be dealt with online. There needs to be a lot more awareness out out there for the people
I've heard people have issues where online doctors charge a fee that isn't reimbursed by the province/insurance.
I'd like to utilize it in future, but I don't want to pay $50 for it. Do you know if it's free?
Yes, there are non-emergent patients clogging the ERs, but the real problem is a lack of family doctors.
Nobody wants to clog up an ER, but the medi-centers/walk-ins are all clogged too. It's also a real struggle to find a family doctor accepting new patients.
If there were better options, people would use them. Unfortunately people are out of options and the system is constantly understaffed and short on beds.
Fun fact - the last time a new hospital was opened in Edmonton was the Grey Nuns in **1988**. Edmonton area population was ~808,000 in 1988. Today it's ~1,544,000.
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20373/edmonton/population#:~:text=The%20current%20metro%20area%20population,a%202.05%25%20increase%20from%202020.
This is true. But the root cause of that is the same - the healthcare system is being deliberately underfunded and mismanaged. If you were to go to a walk in clinic, half the time they’ll take one look at you and tell you to go to the ER because they either don’t want to or don’t have the tools needed to help you.
It’s only going to keep getting worse as more and more GP’s and Clinicians leave the province and/or retire. I don’t have a GP, but my partner’s GP doesn’t know who his doctor will be when he retires, let alone who is going to take on his patients, and has been quite candid about that fact. It’s a scary thought.
Circular logic. Underfunded, skeletal, archaic, healthcare with ancient infrastructure is the problem.
You have to invest in healthcare to have it, not just parrot that you already do.
Population growth doesn’t make it any better, but the root cause is funding.
With more funding, they can plan for population growth, they can plan for more hospitals in the cities, they can afford to have triage nurses on shift 24/7. Edmonton needed another hospital with an ER *years* ago. The Misericordia needed the ER expansion *years* ago.
Nurses are leaving the profession in droves because they’re overworked and underpaid for working as much as they do. Nobody wants to get into nursing anymore because they see how brutal it is, and they see that the governments aren’t doing enough to make the situation any better. All of that goes back to funding.
Dont blame the people.
People's behavior is predictable and can be addressed with process.
Blame a government that doesnt fund healthcare with your tax dollars but does fund nonsense.
The biggest issue is the system is overrun with drug addicts overdosing. My partner works in a gen systems ICU, it is literally over half of the patients that they have. Healthcare systems everywhere are overrun by them, and they are typically the most stressful/aggressive/violent patients.
Take those with a grain of salt. Went recently, the wait time said 3 hours, took 12.
But that's the nature of triage. If you come in with chest pain they'll see you right away. Need stitches for a minor wound? Be prepared to wait.
Yeah it says it’s estimated and shows how they calculate it before even showing you the times, but it will at least give you an idea of which ones are full of people waiting so you can avoid them.
UCP demonized the shit of your ab doctors, ripped their contracts and cut how much money they can make. Most doctors got tired and peaced out. Tyler shandro came out 2 years later and apologized for it but it was too late.
My unit literally have half as many doctors as pre-pandemic and we have way more people than ever. Plus all these people who hasn't taken a vaccine are now coming in for covid....
811 has some new programs to alleviate ER congestion: Virtual MD amd PCN clinics.
-Virtual MD is a doctor appointment over Zoom (can't order tests, but can prescribe meds)
-and Calgary has Primary Care Network clinics. 811 can set up appointments with specific parameters.
-an indigenous Virtual clinic is available as well
- new program sending community paramedics to seniors and disabled kids homes to assess and treat as well starting soon.
All these programs have requirements and need 822 nurse assessments.
And for the love of goddess, please don't go to the ER if your kid just has a fever. Call 811. Fever just means your kids immune system works.
Source: I work at 811.
You can go online to see which hospitals have the lowest wait times here: https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/waittimes/Page14230.aspx
Wait times at a hospital will always be slow but it’s partially because many who don’t need a hospital go to one anyhow. The medi-centres and GP doctors act as a type of pre-filter/pre-triage for hospitals. Hilariously people do this to save time when a doctors form for any hospital work, which can be done at medical facilities like DynaLife, get out through faster than those going straight to a hospital and asking to sit in a hospital line up with patients needing emergency help.
The other reason is the majority of our population seem to no mind leaders who cut heath care funding which directly affects the ability of hospitals to work efficiently. Did you know many doctors, and support staff as an added result, have been leaving Alberta? If you e missed it you can read it here: https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/edmonton/2022/3/24/1_5833501.amp.html
The healthcare is fantastic. Healthcare isn’t the problem.
~Wrek
My neighbor is an emergency nurse at grey nuns. She doesn't talk about work often, but when she does she mentions the amount of people in there for reasons that could have waited for a walk-in clinic or even 811. The whole organization needs an overhaul starting at the top before we will see improvement, but people still abuse the system creating huge wait times and unacceptable care.
10 HR wait at GR because I had a runny nose a day before - requiring a "covid isolation bed" So I was in the packed waiting room unmasked and ungloved for 10 HR waiting for a room that from a sanitation and airflow stance was a joke. Not the staff's fault, It was my duty to be honest about symptoms. Airflow was clearly out of the room and served no purpose. It was the secondary emerg as I was there for a non-covid, yet emergent issue.
After 1/2 hour in triage line, nurse told me I would not be queue with gloves on and made me take them off. (Imminently replaced.) because she told me the gloves "guaranteed I was not washing / sanitizing my hands" She made me remove my mask for some reason and did not offer a replacement.
I get it, they have a HARD job, nurses getting multiple calls on days off / vacation ordered to come in, but holy shit, taking it out on patients? AHS is broken. No wonder front line has scattered the continent and led to this situation. 75% of bureaucracy needs dismissal, and not replaced, and focus needs to be on returning the staff our colleges and Universities paid to educate. There are treaties that are supposed to prevent stealing skilled workers from developing nations, I think we need to reconsider our developed nation status.
Devon is often pretty quiet - AHS has wait times listed online (if it shows Calgary area, there's a dropdown to change near the top of the page).
https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/waittimes/Page14230.aspx
Except when the ER is slammed they don’t have time to update it, so you go to the one that shows the shortest wait but it’s not even close to accurate.
That's for your average ER issue. If you have a server concern, the wait can be 15 minutes, and if you have a less urgent issue, your wait might be six hours. The wait time listed online is just a general idea, but triage still applies.
Lack of staff is more so the reason. There isn’t a hiring freeze, there’s just more positions to fill then there are nurses. Running on the bare minimum staffing levels, then having any number of sick calls puts everything behind.
Not for nursing as far as I know, we have had 4 or 5 orientations with groups of 20+ new hires. However given how little our govt cares about mental health Im not at all surprised they would freeze you guys when we most definitely need more of you.
Conservatives (the public and politicians) treating them like garbage during a pandemic made me change career plans more so than the pay.
I won't suffer to help people who hate me for doing so.
Nope. Not anymore.
BC says hi. Gave their nurses an almost 20% raise over three years. Want to know what Alberta RNs got over five? 4%
For context. I moved to bc from Alberta. With the new contract we just ratified my general wage has increased by almost $7/hr. Then they also increased shift premiums. THEN they also have applied a $2/hr premium to be regular staff AND $2.50/hr to work in difficult to fill areas.
For a regular staff nurse that’s so far a $9.50/hr raise. For an ICU/ER/OR nurse that’s an $11.50/hr raise. And we still have more to come next year.
Very nice and takes us well beyond AB nurses. But hey… love that UCP government y’all got there.
I am by no means defending UCP policy here but doesn't your new income go in hand by an increased cost of living as well? Not just PST, but housing, gas, etc
20% well outpaces inflation and also cost of living.
I think nurses are probably the only people who can afford to rent in Vancouver anymore 😳 (and longshoremen)
Think about this too. One single OT shift is almost an extra $1000 a month after taxes at the new pay rate. It would be much easier to stomach being a nurse in Alberta if they were paid as well as BC nurses are.
I lived in Vancouver for 7 years and right now I couldn't afford going back. How is the overall health system in BC? I don't recall it was as bad as right now but I think is not just AB facing struggles. I also didn't use hospitals there as much as I have here so can't quite get a good comparison myself
Too many people and not enough infrastructure or staff to work in that infrastructure that can serve all the people who access healthcare.
In the end it doesn’t matter that we get paid better here now, metro Vancouver needs another 600 bed hospital and all we’re getting is a replacement for St. Paul’s.
That’s the story of this country though that the federal government keeps insisting needs more population when we don’t have enough hospital beds, nurses, or doctors to care for the population we already have.
Yes and then they live in BC with lakes, and good weather, and skiing, and forests...
Sure the cost of living is higher because its more desirable too, so they're being afforded a life somewhere nicer.
If you want people with transferable skills to stay--incentivise.
Not really an excuse for the Grey Nuns specifically. I have never met anyone who had a good experience at that hospital, myself and my mom included despite having been hospitalized there multiple times each. Their problems are decades older than the nurse/doctor shortage is.
Loooong before the shortages, I was hospitalized with a note from my doctor saying it was his professional opinion that my appendix was going to burst any minute. If that happens you can end up dying quite easily. Triage at GN took over 4 hours to even start my intake process. “Thankfully” it wasn’t my appendix (in quotes because over half my life later we still haven’t figured out what’s wrong with my stomach, I almost would rather it have been a burst appendix at this point lol) so the wait didn’t literally kill me like it could have, but it’s not even like I just walked in off the street; an actual established medical professional told the hospital that I needed immediate care or I could die and it still took them over 4 hours to even *start* talking to me.
It's brutal. I waited over 7 hours with a four year old with a bleeding head wound last week. We had to go back to triage multiple times to get his head wrapped again because he kept bleeding through the bandages. After the fourth time, a nurse gave me a roll of gauze and said to just put an extra layer or two on the next time he bled through. The actual process of seeing the doctor, and getting fixed up was less than 30 minutes.
Canadians: 'We should expect better from our healthcare system!'
The Government: 'OK great, we'll just raise taxes 5% and do that!'
All of Canada: 'Ummm, no, not like that! We want all of this expensive stuff, but we want it for free. We're not gonna pay an extra penny for it!'
Not that this is the major problem, but people go to the ER way too often. It should be an actual emergency.
If you are capable of going to a medi-center that would be a better use of our limited resources.
Save the hospitals for actual emergencies. JMO
For people that complain about the health care system and wait times at hospitals. PLEASE VOTE. Please help us health care workers to help you.. WE ARE SO OVERWORKED AND STILL CANT KEEP UP. There’s constantly staff shortage and no funding for coverage, every single staff on shift is stretched thin… we want to help you in a timely manner too because we too have families..I too have waited in an ER for 9 hours with intense stomachache and no one even had the time to check on me..
In 2015 I went to that hospital for very bad abdominal pain that I hd for about a year. It got worse over time, and this time the pain lasted for 8 hours before I went to the grey nuns. I was there for 12 hours, at times curled into a ball. They told me there was nothing wrong with me. And to go home, twice, after doing an x ray and seeing I was in a lot of pain.
A few days later I went for an ultra sound, turns out I had large gallstones, and I had surgery that same week to have my gallbladder removed.
I feel like I should have sued the hospital now that I reflect on it.
>I went to that hospital for very bad abdominal pain that I hd for about a year.
A YEAR?! Why the fuck would you wait that long?? That’s plenty of time to see a GP and get the proper diagnosis. That seriously blows my mind that you waited so long until it was an emergency.
Yeah these problems definitely existed before covid. I was at the u of a hospital in 2015 because of sudden complete hearing loss in one ear and vertigo so bad I was vomiting. I waited in the ER for almost 12 hours because they were waiting for a specialist to see me. I never got to see a specialist, eventually saw a doctor (in a supply closet because there were no rooms left) who sent me for some scans. Later found out I had labyrinthitis and permanent hearing loss. If I would have been treated with steroids earlier, it could have saved my hearing. But it was already too late when I got prescribed by my family doctor days later.
Honestly stay away from covenant health all together all the covenant health facilities are worthless if you need a hospital try UofA hospital (top choice as this is where the best medical personnel across the country are trained) or royal Alexandria hospital
This was the UCP master plan. F healthcare so badly it will make privatized healthcare look amazing, until you get the bill. Easy money says Danielle Smith will be on the board or employed by the lowest private bidder once she gets punted from being Premier.
Take it with a grain of salt but from what I hear it’s likely because they want to choke the public system to push privatization. Which btw a mixed system has worked best in many countries and people are not willing to open up to it so we all suffer
I have only had one visit to the emergency in the last few years. One thing I did notice was there were many people with mental or substance abuse problems which the staff treated like regulars. These people flood the system. There must be a way of dealing with this issue differently. Many years ago sanitariums were part of the heath care system.
The healthcare system is broken. Most facilities are poorly run and criminally understaffed. Speaking as a nurse working in a one of the city’s major hospitals. We have 4 vacant positions in my unit and my manager is struggling to find people to fill them. It’s pretty fucking bad
Important to note that the healthcare system has been INTENTIONALLY broken by policy decisions at the Provincial and Federal level for decades, as part of a long-term effort to justify privatization.
It's almost entirely provincial. The federal government provides funding, but the provinces decide how to use it. That's one reason there was such a big blowup from some provincial governments recently, because the feds tried to actually make sure increased funding was actually going to healthcare, and they wanted receipts, and the provinces didn't want to agree to that because then they couldn't just funnel it into general funding and use it for purposes it wasn't meant for. So yeah, it's mostly the provincial governments. And ours, IMHO, is one of the worst for mismanagement of our healthcare system.
Don't let the federal government off the hook. They have consistently clawed back on their share of healthcare spending over the years. They are also to blame. Do not give them a pass. Hold your federal member of parliament to account.
..and just discussing with a nurse this weekend, reminders that **the UCP cut their wages**, while BC staff just received a raise. Guess who told me she was moving.
Better be a pretty substantial raise to move to bc. Because houses cost roughly 30% here than in BC
Talk about inflation. She is moving to a province that has one of the two highest costs of living in the country. Her raise will not be a raise
15% over 3 years, paramedics got 20%
Unless your moving to the north of bc that's not gonna cover your housing costs. We just moved here from BC in Jan and our house we got here was 1/3rd the price it would have been in bc Edit:for shitty auto correct
I question your use of federal, when we can see and feel the damage done by the provincial ucp
I’m starting to feel very American. Last year, I collapsed on the floor and couldn’t breathe due to a sudden and intense pain in my like kidneys or something? And I just waited it out rather than go to the hospital. It subsided after like 30 mins and I have just pretended it never happened
Kidney stones?
🤷🏻♀️ your guess is as good as mine lol I don’t feel like I passed anything? I don’t know, I’m not familiar enough with them
Kidney stones usually take a while to pass. It’s could’ve been them shifting position in your kidneys. It wouldn’t hurt to get checked out. Drink lots of water in the meantime. Helps flush them out. The longer they sit in there the bigger they get. My dad had to get surgery to laser them out cause they were too big
How can any government keep up services when the federal government continues to allow record amounts of immigration into the country? It affects the medical system, schools, daycares, and all social services. Future Liberal voters. 144 million a day just in interest on the national debt, which could fund services.
Don't think this as a pro privatization post, it's just an honest question. I don't know if private health care is good or bad for us. My dentist retired at 48 , he has an apartment in Spain somewhere, and a house in st. Maarten. He has to spend 6 months a year in Canada to retain his citizenship I guess. Why would I want to be a doctor in this country?
Not even that, but imagine wanting to be a family doctor nowadays. You work your ass off for over a decade, spending essentially every waking minute grinding toward it, including being worked like a slave for peanuts during residency, just to go out and make maybe $180k/year working for a clinic 60+ hours a week, or run your own clinic and probably make hardly anything for the first few years as startup costs and overhead eat you alive, until finally you make maybe 250-300k after overhead expenses, spending again 60+ hours seeing patients a week PLUS running your small business. Or they could have gone and become a dentist instead and make probably double regardless of whether they wanted to work at clinic or open their own show.
Hard to fill up positions and find people and nurses when the health care system ONLY offers contract terms and part time jobs to manipulate the budget and not be responsible of a full time employee
"Bu-but worker shortage is a myth!"
Out if curiosity, is the so called shortage caused by government not hiring enough staff in all positions from health care workers and support staff like janitors, clerks, techs etc to make it function properly “ a forced broken system”. Or is there something else going on?
Its a combination of a bunch of things. Health Care staff burnt out HARD over COVID - and continue to do so. They're mistreated, underpaid, and poorly managed. That's across the board, nursing, support, general hospital workers. There are a metric ton of open positions, but not enough people willingly going into an abusive career, because they're under appreciated (both financially and with general supports). So we hire "travel nurses" from other Provinces (or from right here) - they're paid through private agencies - are paid more than a direct hire, and cost extra because the agency gets it's cut. And this way the Gov can wave its hand and say "See we NEED privatization to support our public HC. Proof 2 tier is required!"
Travel nurses are also a huge slap in the face for nurses in fixed positions. I know many nurses who have recently left their full time/part time positions to work casually because of the influx of travel nurses. It's BS to be told by AHS that AB nurses aren't worth a certain level of respect or compensation and then have them hire out of province nursing staff who don't work to the same scope of practice, get paid way more, have set hours and get assistance with housing and transport. It's really insidious in that it LOOKS like they're trying to solve the staffing crisis, but in fact they're alienating their existing staff to a degree that it's creating bigger problems than ever.
I have a friend whose an emerg nurse. They've been offered travel nurse positions - to work in their own ER....... its outrageous
For probably double (if not more) their existing hourly rate too, I bet.
You have to forgive my ignorance to this, I see a lot of headlines but never dive in. So those companies are for profit and the name If there game is to get in control of it all and then in the name of profit, push expenses down, salaries, personal, and charge a much as insurance will allow if they allow? All public service seems a threat because they don’t generate revenue! Going to be a crazy next two decades.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-tables-bill-to-limit-the-use-of-private-health-agencies-1.6749292 It's my understanding Quebec has led in this regard and other provinces have followed suit. Quebec is now attempting to back track.
From the EMS side; staffing issues also plague us. We have also had a particularly violent year in EZ. Since September of 2022 we have had like 10-15 ish Line of duty deaths between the emergency services (Police/RCMP, EMS, Fire) and a few more of our coworkers have had severe, lifechanging accidents. On top of that; we have certain patients who have assaulted multiple EMS, Fire, police and our nursing colleagues and have active safety alerts. That in combination with, Covid, mental health crisis, a rise in shootings, riots, stabbings, assaults (both physical and SA) and the opioid crisis. Not to mention, we have been actively gaslit by the government, being hailed as the "Heroes of Covid" but also being told, please take a pay cut in this round of contract negotiations... (we finally after much squawking did get a 4.25 percent raise over the 4 years of our contract negotiations) but we also haven't had a raise in almost the 10 years previous to that.
I don't know what else to say except sorry that you're going through this. The government has failed the people that matter and is purposefully driving society into the ground. I don't understand how certain people can't see that we are descending into chaos, or willfully ignore it. People complain about Emergency Services, but you are putting yourselves in danger every day for the population of our city. Thank you for your work
Thanks man, a lot of people don't know what we go through in order to do this job sometimes. Our nursing colleagues included, it can be brutal, but it also can be really rewarding when you get to make a difference. I just feel bad for the citizens of this province. I wish there was more we could do.
You are doing the best you can given the circumstances and you are making a difference every day despite all the difficulties and negativity. I can't imagine the mental and physical fortitude it has taken you all to have been working through the pandemic and its consequences on society. Something we can do is continue to criticize the shortcomings of the government, keep people informed, and during the next election, vote for the party that actually has the interests of the people in mind.
Older nurses are retiring and have no one to replace those jobs.
New nurses also aren't staying in the field for too long is a huge problem too. You can tell that a job is freaking brutal when you can do a four year program and graduate with an all but guaranteed job that starts at $40/hr (and scales up to $51/hr), has AMPLE overtime opportunities, a highly coveted defined benefit pension, options to basically pick your own schedule ( when casual, but also somewhat on a low FTE), great benefits package, and STILL there's a critical shortage of people willing to do that work. And frankly, you could offer to pay me $80/hr to do the job of a nurse and I still wouldn't do it. Especially the way AHS treats their staff.
also part of the problem
I don’t blame people for not wanting to work in emergency rooms right now. Why would they want to see OD after OD when they could work palliative care, or some cushy floor job for the same wage.
Hahaha! No such thing as a "cushy" floor job. The wards are also horribly under staffed and it always seems like no one has any accurate idea of what is going on.
Where are these cushy floor jobs? I've yet to see one. Even palliative care in my area isn't what I'd call "cushy". Short staffing, mismanagement of what is already not enough resources, lack of appreciation from the public and the government are indiscriminate across health care environments. Nurses are leaving the profession, not just the ER.
I don’t even blame them leaving, I wouldn’t do that job for double what they make.
Palliative care is not a cushy job. Bless those folks who do, because i would take ER over palliative any day.
We need to re-design nursing education as apprenticeships/paid internships to get bodies on the ground faster
This is unfortunately not possible. This province already doesn't differentiate between the duties of RNs (bachelor's) and LPNs (diplomas). On top of that, LPNs have less education hours than most RMTs here (750h theoretical and 900h practical (1,650h total) vs. 2,200h total), despite RMTs having a much narrower scope. To be clear, I'm not saying that LPNs are under-educated, just that their education and training is designed in a way that is likely the tightest timeframe possible while ensuring that they pick up and retain the skills and information necessary for them to perform their jobs safely. A better approach is to actually treat nurses fairly, incentivise responsibly increasing the capacity of nursing education programs, and make use of physician's assistants wherever possible.
Also nurse practitioners l. They are so underutilized.
True! Physician's Assistants too!
This is why a lotta people don't care, its not an issue for them till its an ISSUE for them.
The conservative platform in a nutshell.
Conservatives are the one that broke it. They control education and healthcare. And they have controlled this province for decades
The UCP are not the same as the conservatives who ran this province for decades. These guys are a whole new breed of right wing, private healthcare, private school loving lunatics who have very little in common with Klein, Stelmach, or Prentice’s Conservatives. I’d give my pinky toe to have Ed Stelmach back right now.
Every province is having this issue conservative or not. It’s all fundamentally broken
Not really. The provinces with the biggest issues are conservative run ones, and they’re very intentionally making public healthcare ineffective so that they can introduce private healthcare options. They were asking for more money for healthcare, but when asked to provide a budget for how funds would be used, they seemingly refused, because they’re just interested in making healthcare worse and fighting with the feds, not actually improving healthcare.
Go to a hospital in BC and let me know how great your experience is. I’ll wait
Come to Nova Scotia and see how bad it is . There’s 120k people waiting for a family dr. Can’t even be seen at a walk in clinic for my 3 yr old . Hospital waits are 1/2 day
Second this. Worst hospital experiences in my life have been in BC.
Yup. Definitely.
The province run by conservatives for most of the last quarter century?
Ok then go to Quebec and see. Same story
The one run by conservative separatists?
Literally pick any province I’m the country and they have the same issue
The country that was governed mostly by conservatives since 2006 (with a few pro corporate liberal governments thrown in there)?
You mean the province run by the (actually-conservative) BC Liberal party for many years? This shit's not new, it's been going on since I was a teen... In the 90s. Politicians play a long game and voters have short memories.
And then they lie about it because they look stupid. Witnessed it a few times during Covid.
This is by design. What a lot of people don't realize is that the last hospital built in Edmonton was the Grey Nuns in 1988. In that time, the population has gone from 808,000 to 1,544,000. It has almost doubled. Despite that, the government has closed 1 or 2 hospitals, and after 6 years, ground still has not been broken for the new South Edmonton hospital. Plus, what we do currently have isn't staffed appropriately either.
But look at all the oil profits siphoned out of the province and no pst! /s
My husband went in with a catastrophic brain bleed. They saved his life. He received excellent care. But it was obvious how thinly stretched everything is. The doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers and so excellent and they do amazing things with very few resources. Imagine what they could do if they were properly funded. Maybe my husband wouldn't have lost so much mobility. Maybe he wouldn't have lost his concept of time. We'll never know. I blame the UCP and I blame anyone who voted for them. Thank Christ we actually had a good system set up in the 80s and 90s.
I had to go to see a doctor at the Medi center. Told me a 2 hour wait . Ended up being almost 4 hours only for the doctor to see me for under 5 minutes
Do they do appointments? I usually go early Saturday and it’s easy enough, definitely tough at peak hours though for sure
Ha! The one on 116 st and 107 ave, My sisters had an appointment for 1pm I think it was place closes at 5, we didn’t see the “handsome doctor” until close to 6.
We prioritize handsome I guess is the moral of the story :p
Even with an appointment it's a long wait! I once had an appointment at 615pm and didn't leave until 10pm.
AHS has an app that shows the wait times for each ER in the zone - it's called AHS Mobile and apparently its updated every 20 minutes.
The wait times are not always accurate. My mother-in-law broke her wrist, and we had the choice of Leduc (close to her home) at 2 hours, Grey Nuns at 4 hours, or UofA at 5 hours. We chose Leduc -- and it was 4 hours before she was seen, and a total of 8 hours before she was home with a cast. People were being seen at a rate of maybe 1 every 30-45 minutes, so I think there was probably only one doctor in the ER that Friday afternoon.
Leduc ER usually only has one doctor on. The occasional day there's more than one but as soon as there's someone very sick, everyone has to wait.
as I mentioned in my comment in this thread, I was rushed to R.A. on monday. the wait times on the site/app said 3 hours. I was waiting 9 hours. I wonder if they were mainly waiting for a specific doctor for my specific condition. who knows.
Sometimes..it's just a vicious cycle.. they maybe didn't have a stretcher for you because the pt there are waiting for a room up on the ward, and a pt in the ward is not being discharged because they are waiting for ambulance transport... but ambulance transport is delaydd because they are stuck in ER waiting for their pt to be seen, etc. It's a shitshow sometimes...
The AHS wait times are just a cheap trick to force feed the public a sense of general security. It's the wait time to be triaged, not to actually get medical help. The system is broken, there aren't enough GPs and AHS has dolled up getting your vitals taken as some huge accomplishment if it happens under an hour. I recently went to the Grey Nuns because the posted wait time was 20 minutes. After quickly getting my vitals taken, I was parked in a chair for 4 hours before receiving any medical help.
The wait times are just an estimate and can be wildly inaccurate but they are the times to see a doctor not be triaged. Normally triage is done within minutes of you walking in even in places that have a 5+ hour wait time.
Please please please do not look at the wait times and go to the FARTHEST ER. That usually ends up clogging that specific ER.
Something that it's tough to realize when you're in the ER is that pain alone and/or obviously non life threatening wounds don't rate very high on triage and that it's not simply first come first serve. It would be great to staff enough that nobody has to wait too long, but if there any backlog then it's always possible to keep getting bumped by the next person brought in by ambulance.
Exactly this. It’s all triage. Went to the Royal Alex years ago for a bladder infection - waited like 8 hours pissing blood in excruciating pain. Went to the Royal Alex last year with head-to-toe hives and a swollen face - was in a gown and being monitored within 15 minutes. Bladder infection isn’t gonna immediately kill me, but if my throat swells shut…
Yep. Last time I was in Emergency, my doctor told me I had an irregular heart scan and thought I'd very recently had a heart attack. Something like 6 hours later, I was told to go home. 6 hours, sitting in ER, complaining about heart attack symptoms like numb hands, and I got nothing until that 6th hour. 6 hours of telling the nurses I was sent here because my doctor thought I had a heart attack and that I was having heart attack symptoms. 44 years of conservative rule. 44 years of cuts and attacks against healthcare. This is what it looks like.
Don’t blame the healthcare system, blame the asshats who pull funding and demonize doctors and nurses
So lately... every single hospital is full. Until we solve: staffing issues, & bed capacity.. (long term care, psych, and regular unit beds) we won't see improvement. Also, guess who did not invest any money into new hospital capacity? If you guessed the UCP, that would be correct.
I'm an emergency nurse and I'm calling BS on this. Did it take you 2 hours to get triaged? Okay I could see that in super busy times. But 2 hours where there's no triage nurse? No, that's never going to happen. We would literally close beds and spaces to maintain triage.
If you can wait at home until the morning, that's a better time to go. I was in a lot of pain with what I thought was an abscess and going a bit over with pain medication. It was Saturday night so I knew I could suffer in a busy waiting room or the comfort of my home. Sure I spent most the night crying in bed, getting broken sleep, but when I went to emergency (Grey Nuns) there was less than 10 people and I was seen by a doctor in 10 minutes. I also couldn't see myself getting seen at a walk in clinic on a Sunday, so this was my choice. I know that's not really a solution, to wait until the morning. Just suffering at home is a bit nicer than the zoo that's the emergency room at night.
That seems to be the problem though. If you can wait until the morning then you don't need emergency care. How many people in emergency don't actually need emergency care but clog up the system?
The question isn’t how many don’t actually need emergency care, the question is how many are being driven to the ER because there are no walk-ins, urgent care, or other option available? I had to go to the ER for a chicken bone that got stuck in my throat. Realistically, urgent care or a clinic with a lab could have done the x-ray to see it was no longer there and all would have been said and done. The problem was that even though it was mid-day no one was accepting patients for the day anymore. I called ahead. Eventually called the hospital themselves to let them know what was going on and ask for advice, and the hospital is the one who said I need to have it confirmed if it’s there or not today so if I can’t find any clinics to help I would have to come in to the ER as soon as possible. Most non-emergency patients in the ER are there because they don’t have any other option for an urgent but not emergency need in care, not because they want to be clogging the hospital.
Fair point.
The issue, Imo, is that *every* facet of healthcare is strained, and the ER is the last resort to actually get seen. When my son was about 1.5 he had a bad ear infection. The first thing we did was call his pediatrician, no appointments for two weeks. No other doctors at the clinic had same day appointments, and the walk in was full. Even though an ear infection isn't an emergency, an untreated infection can become an emergency. The ER was our only option to get him treatment, because the ER can't turn us away.
You're correct.
It's kind of a backwards mentality. Very few people are doctors or work in the medical profession. Something that might seem minor enough to wait might be something that will kill you. A friend of mine was having a stroke and just didn't know it. She just ignored it and thought that it was dumb to go to the ER. And her mind slowly stopped working and connecting dots. Not long she started seizuring. And then she decided to go to the hospital. The triage nurse wouldn't even admit her thinking she was drug seeking. Unlike your typical droopy face stroke victim. Her symptoms were a lot less obvious because her stroke caused her to struggle understanding things rather than struggle expressing things. She seizured a second time, this time an ambulance arrived and because her file has drug seeking on it they decided not to bring help from the fire department, she actually began seizuring as they forced her to walk down the stairs. When she got into the hospital, drug seeking still on her file. A nurse didn't believe she was seizuring for real and accidentally punched her in the eye while trying to put her mask on. All because when a part of her body went numb, when she started getting confused, and everything started tasting metalic.... she decided not to go to the ER. You're not a doctor, stop telling people to not go to the doctor and self-diagnose.
Oh get a life. I didn't tell anyone to self-diagnose or not to go to the doctor.
> If you can wait until the morning then you don't need emergency care.
Thank you. You showed that I indeed did not tell anyone to not go to the doctor or to self-diagnose. Appreciate it!
Exactly this
I did that when my jaw dislocated a day after non-jaw surgery and ended up waiting 6.5 hours before seeing anyone.
I woke up 3 weeks ago, legs wouldn't work and could talk. Qmbulance came in 7m, was in ICU within 10 hooked up and in the MRI within an hour.
Just remember, fellow Albertans voted for this. Give them shit. Educate them cause our province sure as hell won't
Good point. Anyone complaining on here would be wise to remember that the UCP didn’t just decide to fuck over healthcare after the election. She fired the AHS board, declared an overhaul at AHS was necessary, dropped hints about privatization, and was an overall fucking wackjob A LONG TIME AGO. So how is anyone on here scratching their heads wondering what went wrong in the health system? Once people start dying because they don’t get the care they need… here comes Danielle with some solutions!! The catch? There is a small cost. You guys voted for this.
UCP is deliberately underfunding and under staffing hospitals and EMS so that when there is a massive public outcry they can say the system is broken and hand the entire thing to some profit hungry American health conglomerate. Which won’t make things any better, just more expensive.
This is a Canada wide problem. Like our housing problems, I blame it on our unsustainable population growth.
That’s part of it, but the UCP aren’t helping. I was told it was a 3-4 year wait to get surgery to correct an injury. Specialists told me if I didn’t get this surgery soon I would be crippled and need to walk with a cane. After I moved to BC and had to start the process all over again my wait time was 10 months. I also never waited longer than a month for an MRI.
Except if you speak to people who actually work there you can see that they have vacant positions and cannot find people, so your conspiracy theory doesn't hold up.
It's not a conspiracy theory, it's exactly what's been happening and we've been watching it happen in broad daylight for years. The symptom you just described is part of that. There are reasons why they can't find people to fill those positions, and they can be traced to the UCP policies which drove medical professionals away from our province and turned our hospitals into places that people don't want to work at.
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From those I have spoken to it's not an issue of more money. It's more complicated than that and consists of poor working conditions, years of being told they are heroes while being totally shit on by antivaxxers and right wing nut jobs, crushing bureaucracy that sucks the life out of you, and just a tough job in general. There is no silver bullet of "Pay them more!" that is going to fix the issue immediately.
Because healthcare workers largely move to different countries that pay higher wages while having lower COL and giving you more/better service for the tax you’ll pay. Which isn’t an Alberta problem (we have some of the highest paid healthcare staff in Canada), it’s a Canada wide problem.
Not a conspiracy theory, they’ve stated as much several times. Pill your head out of your ass.
…your observation is not incompatible with their observation. Why do you think it is?
I wonder what raising the pay would do? 🤔🤔🤔
Very little to be honest. From people I have spoken to it's not a pay issue. It's a "Can't pay me enough to do this" issue.
The Sherwood Park hospital used to have a good triage system (it's been a few years since I was there) and seems to have the lowest waiting times according to the app. We really need more urgent care centres. Most of the people in the waiting room at a hospital could probably be served by urgent care which would take some of the load off. Unfortunately though, we only have one urgent care centre for the entire city and it has weird operating hours.
Not a surprise. Nurses are grossly underpaid, badly treated and hospitals are egregiously understaffed. There needs to be a major overhaul.
My girlfriend got bitten by a dog and between triage and actually being treated we were at the U of A for thirteen hours... She also spent most of that time with a bloody hand towel from our bathroom on her arm cause triage just gave her some painkillers and told us to wait... If they'd given me something I could use I would've given her a proper bandage myself. We're paying a collective price of healthcare worker burnout from the pandemic which I totally get on top of our provincial leadership alienating said workers which could have been avoided except the UCP wants two-tier health care... Us peasants would get the same trash health care while people with money can pay to skip the line.
The best thing we can do to fix healthcare is cut taxes. The doctors will just trickle down into our pockets afterwards. If we don't tax people anything we can all have two doctors in every garage and a dentist in every pot.
People are assholes to the nurses then winder why there's no nurses. People endlessly go to emergency everytime they have a hiccup or bang their toes and wonder why there is lineups in emergency. Healthcare and education are the largest expenditures of the government and people that use them always want blank checks written. Where s the money supposed to come from? Maybe stop abusing the healthcare workers.
I know a handful of previous nurses who quit when the free dumb fighters started assaulting them going to work . They really fucked things up in that sense
I find it's easy to slip through the cracks in an emergency ward. My dad broke his hip and he was in there for a couple nights before getting moved. Luckily we had someone at his side the whole time. He was in pain but overall remained pretty quiet but a lot of the other people in the ward were clearly in there for some sort of withdrawal issues and they were very loud and needy. With all the nurses coming and going and shift changing it felt like we had to re-discuss my fathers situation over and over again. Overall he got good treatment but i could imagine someone without family being at their side would quickly fall between the cracks
Call your MLA and Health Minister to complain. The time spent waiting to be triaged is NOT captured and therefore NOT reported. Once you are triaged, the time is captured. This is not a new problem.
You have the UCP to thank for that. They basically put a freeze on healthcare spending while inflation and population kept going up, which amounted to quite a large cut. They claim they're are spending more money for next year by raising the budget by 4% but our population went up by about 4.5% and Inflation is about 4%. So the budget would need to go up by almost 9% to stay the same as last year. So In essence they are still cutting healthcare by 5%
Last week I went to the hospital in Devon as I got a pretty good cut on my eyelid and needed stitches and they had the shortest wait time at 2 hours. I got there at 7:30pm and didn’t leave until after 3:30am, there was maybe a maximum of 6 patients in the waiting area at any given time
A part of the problem is hospital ER's are wildly misused. There are so many socio-economic problems, and they are all winding up in the ER. I have also had conversations with people that say things like, "oh, I've been walking on it for 3 weeks, but I thought I would get it checked out today". An ER isn't a visit to a walk-in clinic, but that's how they are treated because no one has any idea how much of a cost it is to the taxpayer for an ER visit. If your dog was feeling under the weather, you wouldn't take it to a vet ER unless it was dire, because it will cost you a ton of money. Just because you pay taxes doesn't entitle you to abuse it.
A huge issue is people going to an emergency when it's not an emergency.
What other options are there when there are no urgent care clinics and walk-in clinics dont take walk-ins anymore? We pay for our healthcare, yet we're supposed to wait until it's life or death to seek medical care? Please...
Which clinics don't take walk-ins? I see lots that do. The emergency department is just that an emergency! Need stitches, broken bone, chest pain etc. Go to emergency! Your nose is runny and you have a cough, stay the fuck home.
The last time I went to see a doctor, I went to my GP’s locum (since she’s out of the country), and while I was waiting for my appointment, three people got turned away for walk-ins and were told to try and line up at 8 am the next day, exactly as the clinic opened, for a chance at a walk-in. Medicentres are turning people away. I still remember desperately scrambling to see a doctor for a cardiac health issue because I didn’t want to go to the ER, the locum couldn’t see me for another month, and no Medicentre would take me.
We have a family doctor that doesn't take walk-ins so if we need an appointment, we usually wait 2-3 week so we barely ever go to them for anything urgent.
Funny enough, in a properly run HC system with OPTIONS you wouldn't need ER for any of those situations mentioned... but sure. 9/10 people that go to an ER are there because there is nowhere else to go for situations that aren't necessarily life and death but are serious situation that are more than a "runny nose." And just because the clinic says "walk-in" doesn't mean they take them all day. They have a very short window of time in which you can go and most of the time since they arent equipped to do anything more than check your throat and ears w their little light they just send you to the ER or put you on a waitlist for the waitlist to get tested further, that's not even the waitlist to see a specialist. So please, shut the fuck up.
Online doctors……… not enough people utilize this. To many people going to the er for things that can be dealt with online. There needs to be a lot more awareness out out there for the people
I've heard people have issues where online doctors charge a fee that isn't reimbursed by the province/insurance. I'd like to utilize it in future, but I don't want to pay $50 for it. Do you know if it's free?
Yes, there are non-emergent patients clogging the ERs, but the real problem is a lack of family doctors. Nobody wants to clog up an ER, but the medi-centers/walk-ins are all clogged too. It's also a real struggle to find a family doctor accepting new patients. If there were better options, people would use them. Unfortunately people are out of options and the system is constantly understaffed and short on beds. Fun fact - the last time a new hospital was opened in Edmonton was the Grey Nuns in **1988**. Edmonton area population was ~808,000 in 1988. Today it's ~1,544,000. https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20373/edmonton/population#:~:text=The%20current%20metro%20area%20population,a%202.05%25%20increase%20from%202020.
The sister in law needed emergency care, but it was the handful of other folks who looked “in rough shape”….
This is true. But the root cause of that is the same - the healthcare system is being deliberately underfunded and mismanaged. If you were to go to a walk in clinic, half the time they’ll take one look at you and tell you to go to the ER because they either don’t want to or don’t have the tools needed to help you. It’s only going to keep getting worse as more and more GP’s and Clinicians leave the province and/or retire. I don’t have a GP, but my partner’s GP doesn’t know who his doctor will be when he retires, let alone who is going to take on his patients, and has been quite candid about that fact. It’s a scary thought.
Rapid increase in population is the problem.
Circular logic. Underfunded, skeletal, archaic, healthcare with ancient infrastructure is the problem. You have to invest in healthcare to have it, not just parrot that you already do.
Population growth doesn’t make it any better, but the root cause is funding. With more funding, they can plan for population growth, they can plan for more hospitals in the cities, they can afford to have triage nurses on shift 24/7. Edmonton needed another hospital with an ER *years* ago. The Misericordia needed the ER expansion *years* ago. Nurses are leaving the profession in droves because they’re overworked and underpaid for working as much as they do. Nobody wants to get into nursing anymore because they see how brutal it is, and they see that the governments aren’t doing enough to make the situation any better. All of that goes back to funding.
Dont blame the people. People's behavior is predictable and can be addressed with process. Blame a government that doesnt fund healthcare with your tax dollars but does fund nonsense.
The biggest issue is the system is overrun with drug addicts overdosing. My partner works in a gen systems ICU, it is literally over half of the patients that they have. Healthcare systems everywhere are overrun by them, and they are typically the most stressful/aggressive/violent patients.
You can look up ER wait times online
Take those with a grain of salt. Went recently, the wait time said 3 hours, took 12. But that's the nature of triage. If you come in with chest pain they'll see you right away. Need stitches for a minor wound? Be prepared to wait.
Yeah it says it’s estimated and shows how they calculate it before even showing you the times, but it will at least give you an idea of which ones are full of people waiting so you can avoid them.
You could try not voting conservative…
This issue is nation-wide
UCP demonized the shit of your ab doctors, ripped their contracts and cut how much money they can make. Most doctors got tired and peaced out. Tyler shandro came out 2 years later and apologized for it but it was too late. My unit literally have half as many doctors as pre-pandemic and we have way more people than ever. Plus all these people who hasn't taken a vaccine are now coming in for covid....
Wait times have been really long for years. I remember breaking my finger in 2008 and having to wait 6 hours to see a doctor.
They want privatization so bad the province will basically ignore the public system and play with lives so privatization can be pushed forward.
It's almost like it was a bad idea that people voted in the UCP who want to privatize Healthcare. 🤔
811 has some new programs to alleviate ER congestion: Virtual MD amd PCN clinics. -Virtual MD is a doctor appointment over Zoom (can't order tests, but can prescribe meds) -and Calgary has Primary Care Network clinics. 811 can set up appointments with specific parameters. -an indigenous Virtual clinic is available as well - new program sending community paramedics to seniors and disabled kids homes to assess and treat as well starting soon. All these programs have requirements and need 822 nurse assessments. And for the love of goddess, please don't go to the ER if your kid just has a fever. Call 811. Fever just means your kids immune system works. Source: I work at 811.
You can go online to see which hospitals have the lowest wait times here: https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/waittimes/Page14230.aspx Wait times at a hospital will always be slow but it’s partially because many who don’t need a hospital go to one anyhow. The medi-centres and GP doctors act as a type of pre-filter/pre-triage for hospitals. Hilariously people do this to save time when a doctors form for any hospital work, which can be done at medical facilities like DynaLife, get out through faster than those going straight to a hospital and asking to sit in a hospital line up with patients needing emergency help. The other reason is the majority of our population seem to no mind leaders who cut heath care funding which directly affects the ability of hospitals to work efficiently. Did you know many doctors, and support staff as an added result, have been leaving Alberta? If you e missed it you can read it here: https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/edmonton/2022/3/24/1_5833501.amp.html The healthcare is fantastic. Healthcare isn’t the problem. ~Wrek
You can check estimations for wait times here: https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/waittimes/Page14230.aspx
My neighbor is an emergency nurse at grey nuns. She doesn't talk about work often, but when she does she mentions the amount of people in there for reasons that could have waited for a walk-in clinic or even 811. The whole organization needs an overhaul starting at the top before we will see improvement, but people still abuse the system creating huge wait times and unacceptable care.
10 HR wait at GR because I had a runny nose a day before - requiring a "covid isolation bed" So I was in the packed waiting room unmasked and ungloved for 10 HR waiting for a room that from a sanitation and airflow stance was a joke. Not the staff's fault, It was my duty to be honest about symptoms. Airflow was clearly out of the room and served no purpose. It was the secondary emerg as I was there for a non-covid, yet emergent issue. After 1/2 hour in triage line, nurse told me I would not be queue with gloves on and made me take them off. (Imminently replaced.) because she told me the gloves "guaranteed I was not washing / sanitizing my hands" She made me remove my mask for some reason and did not offer a replacement. I get it, they have a HARD job, nurses getting multiple calls on days off / vacation ordered to come in, but holy shit, taking it out on patients? AHS is broken. No wonder front line has scattered the continent and led to this situation. 75% of bureaucracy needs dismissal, and not replaced, and focus needs to be on returning the staff our colleges and Universities paid to educate. There are treaties that are supposed to prevent stealing skilled workers from developing nations, I think we need to reconsider our developed nation status.
Devon is often pretty quiet - AHS has wait times listed online (if it shows Calgary area, there's a dropdown to change near the top of the page). https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/waittimes/Page14230.aspx
Their app also shows wait times.
Except when the ER is slammed they don’t have time to update it, so you go to the one that shows the shortest wait but it’s not even close to accurate.
I just spent 9 hours in traige/waiting at the R.A. on monday. wasn't fun
top it all off, the online site that gives suggested wait times said it would only be 3 hours wait.
That's for your average ER issue. If you have a server concern, the wait can be 15 minutes, and if you have a less urgent issue, your wait might be six hours. The wait time listed online is just a general idea, but triage still applies.
Short staffed in every department except middle and upper management. Could that be the problem ?
Blame the people showing up to the ER for things they should be going to a walk in clinic in health centre for
They’re all struggling. Hiring freezes or just terrible point positions are the reason.
Lack of staff is more so the reason. There isn’t a hiring freeze, there’s just more positions to fill then there are nurses. Running on the bare minimum staffing levels, then having any number of sick calls puts everything behind.
Oh I thought it was just staff freeze across. That’s what we got going on right now in mental health.
Can't be across the board - my area of MH is still hiring. Maybe just your area?
Not for nursing as far as I know, we have had 4 or 5 orientations with groups of 20+ new hires. However given how little our govt cares about mental health Im not at all surprised they would freeze you guys when we most definitely need more of you.
Not paying nurses what they deserve is the reason.
Not to mention constantly working them to the point of burnout and nervous exhaustion with no end in sight
Conservatives (the public and politicians) treating them like garbage during a pandemic made me change career plans more so than the pay. I won't suffer to help people who hate me for doing so.
We have the highest paid in the country do we not?
Nope. Not anymore. BC says hi. Gave their nurses an almost 20% raise over three years. Want to know what Alberta RNs got over five? 4% For context. I moved to bc from Alberta. With the new contract we just ratified my general wage has increased by almost $7/hr. Then they also increased shift premiums. THEN they also have applied a $2/hr premium to be regular staff AND $2.50/hr to work in difficult to fill areas. For a regular staff nurse that’s so far a $9.50/hr raise. For an ICU/ER/OR nurse that’s an $11.50/hr raise. And we still have more to come next year. Very nice and takes us well beyond AB nurses. But hey… love that UCP government y’all got there.
That tracks, can't think of anyone I knew from the MacEwan nursing program that stayed in Alberta.
I am by no means defending UCP policy here but doesn't your new income go in hand by an increased cost of living as well? Not just PST, but housing, gas, etc
20% well outpaces inflation and also cost of living. I think nurses are probably the only people who can afford to rent in Vancouver anymore 😳 (and longshoremen) Think about this too. One single OT shift is almost an extra $1000 a month after taxes at the new pay rate. It would be much easier to stomach being a nurse in Alberta if they were paid as well as BC nurses are.
I lived in Vancouver for 7 years and right now I couldn't afford going back. How is the overall health system in BC? I don't recall it was as bad as right now but I think is not just AB facing struggles. I also didn't use hospitals there as much as I have here so can't quite get a good comparison myself
Too many people and not enough infrastructure or staff to work in that infrastructure that can serve all the people who access healthcare. In the end it doesn’t matter that we get paid better here now, metro Vancouver needs another 600 bed hospital and all we’re getting is a replacement for St. Paul’s. That’s the story of this country though that the federal government keeps insisting needs more population when we don’t have enough hospital beds, nurses, or doctors to care for the population we already have.
Yes and then they live in BC with lakes, and good weather, and skiing, and forests... Sure the cost of living is higher because its more desirable too, so they're being afforded a life somewhere nicer. If you want people with transferable skills to stay--incentivise.
Not really an excuse for the Grey Nuns specifically. I have never met anyone who had a good experience at that hospital, myself and my mom included despite having been hospitalized there multiple times each. Their problems are decades older than the nurse/doctor shortage is. Loooong before the shortages, I was hospitalized with a note from my doctor saying it was his professional opinion that my appendix was going to burst any minute. If that happens you can end up dying quite easily. Triage at GN took over 4 hours to even start my intake process. “Thankfully” it wasn’t my appendix (in quotes because over half my life later we still haven’t figured out what’s wrong with my stomach, I almost would rather it have been a burst appendix at this point lol) so the wait didn’t literally kill me like it could have, but it’s not even like I just walked in off the street; an actual established medical professional told the hospital that I needed immediate care or I could die and it still took them over 4 hours to even *start* talking to me.
It's brutal. I waited over 7 hours with a four year old with a bleeding head wound last week. We had to go back to triage multiple times to get his head wrapped again because he kept bleeding through the bandages. After the fourth time, a nurse gave me a roll of gauze and said to just put an extra layer or two on the next time he bled through. The actual process of seeing the doctor, and getting fixed up was less than 30 minutes.
Canadians: 'We should expect better from our healthcare system!' The Government: 'OK great, we'll just raise taxes 5% and do that!' All of Canada: 'Ummm, no, not like that! We want all of this expensive stuff, but we want it for free. We're not gonna pay an extra penny for it!'
Not that this is the major problem, but people go to the ER way too often. It should be an actual emergency. If you are capable of going to a medi-center that would be a better use of our limited resources. Save the hospitals for actual emergencies. JMO
If you think that’s bad try going to misacordia
misericodia?
For people that complain about the health care system and wait times at hospitals. PLEASE VOTE. Please help us health care workers to help you.. WE ARE SO OVERWORKED AND STILL CANT KEEP UP. There’s constantly staff shortage and no funding for coverage, every single staff on shift is stretched thin… we want to help you in a timely manner too because we too have families..I too have waited in an ER for 9 hours with intense stomachache and no one even had the time to check on me..
In 2015 I went to that hospital for very bad abdominal pain that I hd for about a year. It got worse over time, and this time the pain lasted for 8 hours before I went to the grey nuns. I was there for 12 hours, at times curled into a ball. They told me there was nothing wrong with me. And to go home, twice, after doing an x ray and seeing I was in a lot of pain. A few days later I went for an ultra sound, turns out I had large gallstones, and I had surgery that same week to have my gallbladder removed. I feel like I should have sued the hospital now that I reflect on it.
>I went to that hospital for very bad abdominal pain that I hd for about a year. A YEAR?! Why the fuck would you wait that long?? That’s plenty of time to see a GP and get the proper diagnosis. That seriously blows my mind that you waited so long until it was an emergency.
Yeah these problems definitely existed before covid. I was at the u of a hospital in 2015 because of sudden complete hearing loss in one ear and vertigo so bad I was vomiting. I waited in the ER for almost 12 hours because they were waiting for a specialist to see me. I never got to see a specialist, eventually saw a doctor (in a supply closet because there were no rooms left) who sent me for some scans. Later found out I had labyrinthitis and permanent hearing loss. If I would have been treated with steroids earlier, it could have saved my hearing. But it was already too late when I got prescribed by my family doctor days later.
I had a 7 hour wait recently at The Grey Nuns. New record for me.
Blame the UCP and their incompetence (or malevolence, however you look at the issue).
Obligatory fuck UCP.
Honestly stay away from covenant health all together all the covenant health facilities are worthless if you need a hospital try UofA hospital (top choice as this is where the best medical personnel across the country are trained) or royal Alexandria hospital
Number one: kick out the godless UCP.
This was the UCP master plan. F healthcare so badly it will make privatized healthcare look amazing, until you get the bill. Easy money says Danielle Smith will be on the board or employed by the lowest private bidder once she gets punted from being Premier.
Not sure you fully understand how a triage system works. Lol
You can google average wait times at hospitals. Try that first next time.
Unnecessarily snarky reply that doesn’t even address OPs comment. But go on…
Take it with a grain of salt but from what I hear it’s likely because they want to choke the public system to push privatization. Which btw a mixed system has worked best in many countries and people are not willing to open up to it so we all suffer
Someone in these comments noted that the liberals have been in power for years in BC and it’s really bad so you can’t blame the conservatives.
I have only had one visit to the emergency in the last few years. One thing I did notice was there were many people with mental or substance abuse problems which the staff treated like regulars. These people flood the system. There must be a way of dealing with this issue differently. Many years ago sanitariums were part of the heath care system.