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Surrey Memorial nurses say despite the hospital upgrades, the emergency ward is still in crisis.
BC Nurses Union Steward Gail Conlin says the new emergency department is facing issues of overcrowding, long wait times, and hallway medicine.
“I do not believe as a nurse myself opening the critical care tower with the critical care units wouldn’t necessarily offload or decant the emergency.”
Conlin says there is no one solution.
“It’s a beautiful critical care tower. But what they’ve done is they’ve moved ICU over, the renal unit over, neonatal intensive care over. They’ve opened a neurology unit. So they still have patients to bring over. But unless you need any one of those critical care units, the people aren’t going there, the patients aren’t going there. The majority of the patients are going to the medical units.”
And she says there is a shortage of those medical units and admitting beds meaning patients build up in the emergency department.
“One of the doctors said to me, and I quote, ‘this is the worst that I’ve ever seen it.’”
Last fall, the health minister promised a review of Fraser Health, after nurses sounded the alarm about overcrowding problems in many of the region’s ERs.
Conlin says they’re still waiting on that review.
Agencies/Canadajournal
