Staff shortages pressure hospitals in Golden Horseshoe to nearly close

Staffing shortages in Ontario hospitals has led to at least one emergency room in Ontario turning to nursing students and medical residents to keep up with increased demand.

In some rural areas, the shortage has forced emergency rooms to shut down for hours or even days. So far, Hamilton, Halton, and Niagara have been able to avoid such extreme measures, but hospitals in our region are feeling the pressure too.

Chief of Emergency Medicine at St. Joseph’s Hospital Dr. Greg Rutledge says the number of patients seeking treatment has gone up in recent months.

The demand has gone up partly because people with chronic conditions who did not seek treatment during the height of the pandemic are now coming in and partly due to major staffing shortages across the healthcare industry.

There are nearly 700 job vacancies across the St. Joe’s and Hamilton Health Sciences hospital systems.

Hundreds of staff are isolating due to COVID-19 just as the city of Hamilton reports an increasing number of COVID-related hospitalizations.

The staff shortages and the increase in patients are causing impacts on service and increasingly high wait times across the hospital sector.

West Lincoln Memorial Hospital in Grimsby has one of the longest wait times in the area for emergency room patients who need to be admitted. The province says on average, that the wait time is 51.7 hours compared to the provincial average which is 20.5 hours.

Chief of Emergency Medicine for Hamilton Health Sciences Dr. Kuldeep Sidhu says West Lincoln has fewer beds partly due to a COVID-19 outbreak and that’s why the wait time for emergency room admission patients is so high. “This is probably as busy as I’ve seen it in my career,” Dr. Sidhu said.

St Joseph’s Hospital and HHS say despite the challenges, they have enough staff to accommodate an expected increase in patients this long weekend.

The Hamilton Paramedic Service says they also are dealing with staffing challenges but expect to have normal or near normal levels of staff this weekend.

St Joe’s and HHS are asking people to only come to the emergency room this weekend if it is an emergency and if you can seek treatment at an urgent care centre or through a family physician, or call Telehealth Ontario to please do so.