Hanes: Quebec is trapped in a vicious cycle of health system failure

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If you call an ambulance in Quebec on these days, it can take a long time to arrive.

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If you go to the ER with non-urgent symptoms, you may be turned away or found closed.

If you’re not feeling well, consider yourself lucky if you have a family doctor to call. But even if you do, it can be challenging to get an appointment right away.

These aren’t just hypothetical situations, they’re real-life scenarios playing out in Quebec this summer due to severe staffing shortages. The expectation that help will be available if we need it is being tested, not just in remote regions or small towns, but also in major hubs like Montreal.

A 91-year-old woman died after a fall and waiting seven hours in pain, trapped in a chair on his balcony after calling 911.

Montreal’s McGill University Children’s Health Center issued a warning over the weekend urging patients to seek help elsewhere for non-emergency matters because staffing shortages and a rise in severe cases had led to the hospital on the edge of the abyss.

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Another six hospital emergency rooms out of 117 in the province are partially closed during what Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé has warned will be a difficult summer. This includes Lachine Hospital, which was closed overnight last winter despite protests. This time, it is open for walk-ins, but the ambulances are diverted from the evening hours.

Lakeshore General Hospital also asked patients with non-urgent complaints to stay away due to high volumes last month. But as the one-third of Montrealers without a family doctor know all too well, accessing medical help if you’re not assigned a general practitioner can be a time-consuming and frustrating experience. This, in turn, forces many to rely on already overburdened emergency rooms for basic matters, exacerbating the burden on hospitals.

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Quebec is currently locked in a vicious circle of system failures. These are not new problems. They have been going on for decades. But they are getting worse, and the extent to which outages are becoming more frequent and widespread.

An already strained health system has been pushed to its breaking point by the ongoing pandemic, and it is far from over. And let it be clear that when we talk about the system, we refer to the people who work in it: doctors, nurses, paramedics, stretcher bearers, janitors, occupational or physical therapists. Similarly, when we discussed the shortage of hospital beds in Quebec during the first waves of the pandemic, what we really meant was that there is a shortage of caregivers to care for them.

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There is no medical care without the human beings who provide it. And if we don’t take care of them, the whole system suffers.

When Children’s says to avoid coming, it’s because every last person who could be convinced to come for a weekend or cut their vacation short had already arrived to help. Healthcare workers have a tremendous sense of duty. But that kind of constant demand is just as unsustainable for those exhausted people as it is for a sick system.

It is no coincidence that professionals who work in the health system are among those who sound the loudest alarm about their fragile state. Hard work is the operative word here. Healthcare has always been a demanding field with long hours and night shifts to cover. But the growing needs of an aging population, orphaned patients with increasingly complex problems, mandated overtime, canceled vacations, poor support and constant pressure to do more are driving many crucial players away from health care. And who can blame them?

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Whether they are burning out, retiring, giving up altogether, leaving Quebec for supposedly greener pastures, or going into the private sector, there are fewer and fewer doctors, nurses, and paramedics when we need them most. Matches only make things more difficult for those left behind.

To fix the faltering system, we desperately need more health workers. But these are not professions you can train for overnight. Recruitment efforts and plans to increase enrollment in training programs are not bearing fruit, whether for nursing home orderlies or family physicians.

The Quebec government’s remedy has been to offer better wages along with the promise of better working conditions. But when things are this bad, money only speaks volumes for the demoralized. And promised reforms take a long time to materialize, if they ever do.

All of this means that things are sure to get worse before they get better, both for patients and for healthcare workers and the system.