Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital ER closed overnight after nurse sit-in | 24CA News

The Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital’s emergency room was closed in a single day Monday, with solely probably the most pressing circumstances being accepted. It reopened at 8 a.m. Tuesday morning.

The transfer adopted a sit-in by nurses who’re threatening to resign if modifications are usually not made.

“It was just waiting to explode and now we’re there,” stated auxiliary nurse Louise Fotheringham.

 “You come in and see the nurses turn grey from working so many hours.”

Patients who had been already admitted had been handled, together with those that arrived by ambulance and had been thought-about “unstable,”, the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal stated in an announcement.

“I met the CEO of the CIUSSS this evening who had discussions with the nurses,” Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé stated on Twitter Monday night time.

“The emergency situation at HMR is currently untenable, I am aware of that. Our priority is to ensure the safety of all patients. That’s why we made the difficult decision to limit activities to the emergency room for this night. We will update you tomorrow.”

The partial closure of the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital ER comes after a sit-in by nurses who accuse administration of mismanagement and refuse to observe its contingency plan.

In a petition signed final week and obtained by Radio-Canada, nurses within the hospital’s ER demanded the speedy resignation of their unit head and pledged to resign en masse Wednesday. About 90 per cent of the 110 staff on the crew have signed the petition.

When requested if she would hold the unit head, the final director of common and specialised bodily well being applications on the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal Martine Leblanc stated “she’s doing everything possible with the resources she has.”

Compulsory time beyond regulation a core challenge

Health-care staff have lengthy denounced the obligatory time beyond regulation imposed because of the lack of nurses.

“I’m covering for two or three nurses and I won’t be out until 8 a.m. tomorrow morning because tonight, the problem is that we’re missing eight nurses,” stated nurse Annie Bourgeois.

Asked if nurses might meet moral requirements within the hospital’s present scenario, one other nurse replied “absolutely not.”

“This is our dilemma. Do we lose our licence because we refuse to work, or do we lose our licence because we are going to kill someone?” stated Annie Fournier, an emergency nurse at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital

Fournier and her colleagues criticize administration for failing to retain employees, producing a hostile ambiance and poor working situations. She additionally criticizes using time beyond regulation for administration moderately than as an distinctive measure.

Leblanc informed Radio-Canada’s Tout un matin that employees shortages are on the coronary heart of the ER’s issues and that the CIUSSS wants to rent extra nurses so everybody can have an equitable workload.

“We have to avoid (compulsory overtime) at all costs … no one wants to force people to stay in unplanned ways, we are very conscious that it affects people’s lives,” she stated.

“We know it won’t attract people to come work here … people aren’t enticed to join our teams and we need to find a way to reverse that … with a more balanced workload.”

Sources informed Radio-Canada that greater than 400 obligatory time beyond regulation hours had been labored throughout the first weekend of January and that the overwhelming majority of nurses had been referred to as into work.

In Quebec, some thirty hospitals have efficiently applied a neighborhood schedule administration system that helps scale back using obligatory time beyond regulation. But Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital is not a type of, and their emergency division attendance may be very excessive.

Over the previous week, the mattress occupancy fee within the hospital emergency room has fluctuated between 94 per cent and 141 per cent.

Dubé stated final week that Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital was one of many institutions which have “the most difficulty in implementing measures.”