Gatineau Hospital ER closed due to nursing shortage

The Gatineau Hospital's emergency department will be closed until 4 p.m. on Monday due to a nursing shortage, according to western Quebec's health unit.

Unforeseen absences Friday evening along with a lack of expertise from those who were working made it hard to assess patients arriving at the ER, saidJose Filion, general director ofCentre intgr de Sant et de Services sociaux de l'Outaouais (CISSSO)

"Beyond providing access to care and services, we must above all offer safe and high-quality care to the population," Filion told reporters ata French-language press conference Saturday.

"The situation in which we found ourselves [on Friday] evening did not allow us to get there," she said.

• Emergency rooms over capacity at some Outaouais hospitals

According to the health unit,ambulances will be redirected to the Hull Hospital.

Patients can go eitherto the Hull Hospital or the Papineau Hospital in Buckingham, although children should be taken to theGatineau Hospital's ambulatory pediatric centre, the health unit said.

The health unitalso suggestsbooking an appointment with the Mdigo Clinic ora family physician or seeing a pharmacist.

In a press release, CISSSOsaidit was"doing everything to stabilize the situation as quickly as possible."

Serge Gauvreau, deputy director ofCISSSO'snursing department, said workis underway to avoid other health centres from being overloaded by the ER's closure.

"Some nurses and nursing assistants will come and lend a hand to their colleagues at the Hull Hospital," he said.

In a French statement, Mathieu Lacombe, the minister responsible for the Outaouais, said the situation is being closely monitored.

"All the options were analyzed before coming to this conclusion," he said.

"The aim is clear: the ER must reopen as quickly as possible, and the teams are working tirelessly on it.In the meantime, no patient will be left behind."

'Not a new problem'

Action Sant Outaouais, a group that advocates for the rights of patients,expressed concern about the latest breakdown in service.

In a letter toQuebec's minister of health and to the minister responsible for the Outaouais region, the group said there was asimilar disruption to intensive care at the Gatineau Hospital in September 2020.

"The problem is that it is not the first time that they closed [an]essential services department," Denis Marcheterre, president of the group, told CBC News on Saturday afternoon.

"The lack of nurses is not a new problem. And it's not a problem that will be resolved in a few weeks from now. It's going totake months and years."

Action Sant Outaouais has calledon the Quebec government to develop a long-term plan to overcome CISSSO's workforce problems.

Marcheterre said nurses need to have breaks especially after working through three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and worried these sorts of closures could "become the new standard."

"Several solutions have been proposed to different governments ...and there has been not much action,"he said.

"What we need now is to go [through] those solutions that have been proposedin the past 10 years or so ...and do something."