Death of young mother sparks scrutiny of rising fatalities in N.S. emergency rooms | 24CA News

The demise of a younger mom in an Amherst, N.S. hospital, is renewing scrutiny of the province’s health-care system, and the way emergency departments are functioning below the pressure of staffing shortages and overcrowded ready rooms.

On Dec. 31, 37-year-old Allison Holthoff waited greater than six hours to see a health care provider on the Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre whereas she skilled excruciating ache in her stomach. 

Her husband drove her to the emergency division at 11 a.m. AT and he or she spent her time between a wheelchair and mendacity on the ground within the ready room earlier than she was delivered to an examination room. 

“At one point I even did go out and told them, ‘She’s not doing good, she says she’s feeling like she’s dying,’ and nobody said or did anything,” mentioned her husband Gunter Holthoff. 

After extra time handed, the nurses ready Allison for an X-ray, however her husband mentioned she went into cardiac arrest earlier than the check could possibly be carried out. She was resuscitated 3 times and later died within the intensive care unit. 

Emergency room deaths are at a six-year excessive, in line with figures shared with 24CA News by the Nova Scotia NDP Caucus following a freedom of knowledge request.

In 2022, 558 folks in Nova Scotia died in emergency departments, up from 505 in 2021 and 393 in 2020. 

“Any time we have numbers that are going up … it’s deeply concerning,” mentioned Susan Leblanc, MLA for Dartmouth North and NDP well being spokesperson. 

“We know that people are waiting for long, long waits in the emergency departments … so when the waits end in a death, it’s obviously the worst case scenario.”

The variety of deaths in comparison with sufferers remains to be extraordinarily low, at 0.12 per cent. But the proportion was at its highest in 2022 in comparison with the earlier 5 years.

Late final week, 24CA News requested Nova Scotia Health for the variety of deaths which have occurred in emergency departments within the province. The division declined, citing privateness guidelines. 

The president-elect of Doctors Nova Scotia mentioned deaths in emergency rooms don’t essentially imply an individual did not obtain enough care. 

“Often people are going to emergency departments because they’ve got life-threatening things going on, like heart attacks, or seriously injured in an accident,” mentioned Dr. Colin Audain, anesthesia web site chief for the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax. “I think it’s fair to say that health care in general is in a bit of a crisis and that the emergency department is sort of the ground zero.”

Almost 130,000 Nova Scotians haven’t got a household physician. Audain mentioned this implies extra folks go to the emergency division and trigger backlogs. 

He mentioned employees are run off their toes. 

“Most health care workers these days are under a tremendous amount of stress. They’re constantly inundated with patients that they don’t have the resources to deal with.”

In 2022, there have been 536,666 complete visits to emergency departments throughout the province. Around eight %, or 43,142 sufferers, left with out being seen. 

Issue throughout the nation

Dr. Robert Robson, a longtime doctor and affected person security advisor in Dundas, Ont., mentioned he was saddened by the news of Allison’s demise, however he was not shocked. 

In the final yr, a number of folks have died after ready for care in emergency rooms in New Brunswick and Quebec.

“It’s reflective of a bigger problem which affects hospitals all across the country and that’s the important issue, I think,” he mentioned.

“This is not just a Maritime issue, I’m not trying to minimize what happened in Amherst, and this is not just a small- or medium-sized emergency department hospital issue — this kind of breakdown in the way care is provided occurs in all types of hospitals.”

He mentioned there was a “deterioration” in well being care, as medical professionals are exhausted after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as hospitals lose funding.

“None of the people working at [the Amherst] hospital — I am absolutely certain — would go to work with the intention of harming or the intention of not providing care, but the fact is that the circumstances in which they’re working are such that it becomes very challenging,” he mentioned.

“I’m not saying this to let anybody off the hook, but we need to understand all of those factors, and if we don’t seriously look at them, the chance of making any progress is very limited.”

Growing, getting older inhabitants

While this is a matter throughout the nation, Nova Scotia has some key challenges.

Katherine Fierlbeck, the chair of the division of political science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, mentioned the COVID-19 pandemic has strained the provincial health-care system, which was already stricken with an getting older and sick inhabitants.

Despite this, the pandemic drew extra folks to the area, with Nova Scotia’s inhabitants surpassing a million folks in 2021.

“The population has really exploded and our infrastructure really has not been able to keep up with this,” Fierlbeck mentioned.

She mentioned enchancment is feasible, however it should require long-term structural modifications between the federal and provincial governments.

“Basically, the best advice I can say is, just don’t get sick, don’t have accidents, and if you do, make sure it’s serious enough that you get seen first and not so complicated though they can’t figure it out quickly.”

Working on recruitment, retention

As of Tuesday, there are 12 doctor positions vacant inside emergency departments throughout the province, two of that are on the Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre in Amherst.

For registered nurses, there may be a mean emptiness charge of practically 32 per cent throughout regional well being care centres and the Halifax Infirmary as of the top of November, in line with knowledge from Nova Scotia Health.

The highest emptiness charge is on the Yarmouth Regional Hospital, the place it is 57.2 per cent. Cape Breton Regional Hospital follows with a 43.9 per cent emptiness charge.

Nova Scotia Health Minister Michelle Thompson mentioned there may be “a significant gap in our province for nursing.”

“At Nova Scotia Health, we could accept 1,500 nurses today,” she instructed CBC Radio’s Information Morning Nova Scotia Tuesday.

Thompson mentioned essential care nursing is a subspecialty with a smaller pool of candidates.

“We are looking at not only training our own workforce, but also how we can work through immigration streams to bring people into our province to work through our health-care system,” she mentioned.