Vanessa Brydges says she waited with her son for 12-hours in the emergency department at CHEO to see a doctor, as the hospital deals with patient and staffing pressures.
At CHEO, parents say they are sleeping in the ER overnight, cradling their young ones as they desperately wait for medical care."It’s just very difficult when you have to wait 10-12 hours and are sitting there, trying to figure out what’s going on with your child," Brydges says. "Every parent there is just as stressed out as I am."The issue is not just affecting CHEO, but hospitals right across the province. Staff are dealing with a healthcare worker shortage and burnout.
"We keep breaking our own records, which isn’t anything that we want to do," said Tammy DeGiovanni, CHEO’s clinical services senior vice-president and chief nurse executive."Healthcare has been acting like an elastic band and you can keep stretching it and eventually the elastic band will just break," said Karen McCoy, CHEO’S union bargaining president. "We are headed down that road right now.
"It’s very difficult because you put your hope into the system and hoping that it’s going to help parents and support parents and guardians, but your kids look at you helpless and screaming in pain or with confusion," said Brydges."There’s more kids, there’s less services available in the community," Degiovanni said. "We have a shortage of primary care providers and we have less clinics available in the community.
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