Calgary pediatric hospice discharging all respite patients, redeploying staff to children’s hospital | 24CA News
The Rotary Flames House, a pediatric hospice in Calgary, is quickly pausing its providers and discharging all its respite sufferers to redeploy employees to Alberta Children’s Hospital.
The Rotary Flames House supplies palliative, respite and end-of-life look after pediatric sufferers, in addition to grief assist for fogeys.
According to Alberta Health Services (AHS), employees on the Rotary Flames House are being redeployed to the youngsters’s hospital resulting from a respiratory viruses surge. The hospital is seeing excessive numbers of sufferers requiring care in its emergency, inpatient and pediatric intensive care models.
About 20 full-time employees and “a number of casual employees” will likely be redeployed from the Flames House to the youngsters’s hospital, AHS mentioned in an emailed assertion to 24CA News.
Jeff Presswood, a Calgary father, mentioned he was devastated after listening to the Rotary Flames House was placing its respite care providers on maintain.
Presswood is the first caregiver for his 14-year-old son, who’s severely disabled and desires 24/7 care. Presswood and his household have been trying to go to their daughter, who lives in another country, this Christmas. But they needed to cancel these plans after dropping the respite care they often depend on from the Rotary Flames House.
“I spent my day crying yesterday. It’s just such a blow,” Presswood mentioned.
“This is a big deal for our family to lose this. We don’t have any other respite.”
AHS mentioned it goals to discharge all respite sufferers on the Rotary Flames House by Dec. 6. About seven households use the home’s respite providers every week, in accordance with AHS. All different providers supplied on the home will likely be quickly moved to the youngsters’s hospital.
In October, the Calgary Flames Foundation gave the home a $1.25-million donation over the following 5 years in assist of respite and end-of-life care.
Prioritizing acutely ailing youngsters
Margaret Fullerton, a registered nurse and senior working officer on the youngsters’s hospital, mentioned though it was a tough determination to redeploy the Rotary Flames House employees, the hospital’s precedence is caring for acutely ailing youngsters.
“The patients that require respite are very medically fragile, we know, but they’re medically stable and they don’t require the acute hospitalization like what we’re seeing with acute care,” Fullerton mentioned.
“We want to tell [families] how sorry we are that we had to make this decision, that we hope that it’s a short period of time, that we’ll rebook their respite care.”
Fullerton mentioned she couldn’t give a precise date for when respite providers might resume on the Rotary Flames House because it is dependent upon when the respiratory sickness surge subsides.
In an emailed assertion, AHS mentioned it might do its “best to resume this important [respite] service as soon as possible.”
‘We are right here for you’
Fullerton mentioned whatever the pressure on the health-care system, households ought to nonetheless come to the Children’s Hospital emergency if their youngster may be very sick with any sickness.
“We are here for you,” she mentioned.
As for Presswood, he mentioned he enormously appreciates the work of medical employees on the Rotary Flames House and Alberta Children’s Hospital and doesn’t blame them for the pause in respite providers.
But he’s pissed off that the pressure on the health-care system has led to damaging penalties for therefore many households like his.
“This is what it’s come to that we’re stripping nurses away from these kids,” he mentioned.
