Opinion: Urgent Care Needed: My Week of Waiting Rooms in Alberta’s Besieged Hospitals

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On a weekend trip to a wedding in Spruce Grove, I had the usual semi-anxious fits of overthinking the contents of the in-vehicle first aid kit, the smaller version I keep in my handbag. For more than two years, I have been repeating the same mantra to my children: be careful. You don’t want to end up in an emergency room right now. I should listen to my own advice.

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In a moment of carelessness helping with dinner, he reached for a burner under a hot plate, but it was already on. One of the guests is a paramedic and advises me to go to a hospital. My wounds have telltale signs of third degree burns. Someone fills a Ziplock bag with cold water and I dip my burned fingers in as my cousin drives to Mercy Community Hospital in west Edmonton.

The triage nurse tells me that the estimated wait to see a doctor is eight to 10 hours. I can’t wait, my kids are back at the wedding. I’m walking and talking, so I’m fine, relatively speaking. The nurse turns away from her computer and leans in, like an old friend with a secret. She lists the supplies I need to buy and tells me to see a doctor as soon as she gets back to Calgary.

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I spill my bag of water through the aisles of a pharmacy, picking up what I need. I wonder what happens to the people who can’t wait eight to 10 hours, the people who have to work, who can’t afford $60 for gauze, ointment, waterproof tape, and Second Skin. My cousin takes me back to the wedding and wraps my fingers. I missed dinner, but I lost my appetite.

Back in Calgary, a volunteer from Sheldon M. Chumir Urgent Care asks me the COVID-19 screening questions and hands me a small yellow piece of paper. He also carries a stack of red pieces. On the wall above the waiting areas are larger versions of these colors. In the far corner, people with red pieces do not look good.

A digital sign announces the waiting time: four hours. Monitors share messages about opioid addiction and recovery. This facility is in the Beltline, my old neighborhood, one with a diverse population that includes many at-risk citizens. Some patients have their worldly belongings in a shopping cart outside. It is also located between downtown office towers and thriving communities. A well-dressed older woman walks up to the security desk and asks where the Second Cup Cafe is. She will meet someone before getting vaccinated for her cruise at the travel clinic upstairs. This is Calgary.

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A woman on her phone tells a little boy that someone else will pick him up. In another call, she pleads with her mother to stop asking for money. He has his last $40 left.

A young man introduces himself to the man in the next chair, a new Canadian from India. They talk about hospitals, with Chumir and Rockyview being the two best options for emergency visits, in the young man’s opinion. He is a cook in a downtown restaurant.

They talk about the Calgary Stampede, how expensive it is, how the city changes in 10 days, and not always for the better.

“You don’t want to be in the ER during Stampede,” says the cook.

When my name is called, I explain my situation to a young doctor. I tell him I feel stupid about what happened, but on the bright side, I kept my right hand out of the human soup at World Water Park the day after I was injured. He laughs and I’m relieved that he doesn’t scold me for taking three kids into a wave pool with third-degree burns on their hands.

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You must debride the burned tissue, which will require freezing the affected fingers first. I feel nauseous.

The doctor suggests that he not watch the procedure. I look away and he makes a conversation to distract me from what’s going on. We discussed the diversity of the patients he sees, how he’s from Edmonton but he studied medicine in Calgary. I say that he is a superhero for doing what he does, in increasingly deteriorating conditions. He says that the real superheroes are social workers.

“I remember the moment I realized how Calgary is different from Edmonton. I was in med school, meeting friends at a craft beer place. It was packed, but I got a table just as people were leaving. A man in a nice suit came up and offered me $150 for my table.” The doctor shakes his head, “I was a student. I took the money. But in that moment, I learned a lot about Calgary.”

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The next day, I take a seat in the waiting room of the burn unit at Foothills Medical Center. A man waits with both arms, both hands and all 10 fingers bandaged. The perspective is smart as a needle in the thumb.

Two nurses are in the corner, talking. One of them says that she “finally she had to call in sick” because she had only slept four hours in the last three days. They talk about feeling overwhelmed and stressed. They’re running out of smoke.

They teach me to care for wounds. The nurse is impressed with the bandage made in the Chumir. She wishes they had the same materials, but supply chain problems are such that “they’ve run out of almost everything.” She puts breathable pads and little compression sleeves on my fingers. They look like little leg warmers.

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After a follow-up trip to the burn unit, it cost me a little over $150 to treat this injury, including supplies, a prescription ointment, and many hours of parking.

What stands out to me about each hospital is the positivity. You would never imagine that these workers have overcome two and a half years of unprecedented challenges brought on by the global pandemic or that they are working without the proper supplies to care for their patients due to supply chain issues.

All patients received the same level of respect, whether they wore designer shoes or wore their only clothes. The waiting rooms housed diverse Albertans, from eight to 80 years old, and all were received with loving interest. There was no tone of jaded exasperation or bad morals. There was no evidence of a broken system or a group of workers who possibly have little reason for optimism. I witnessed high-quality care delivered by people who have every reason to be angry, frustrated, and fed up.

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South Calgary Health Center just announced a reduction in urgent care patient admission hours due to staffing issues. The Airdrie Community Health Center recently began closing the urgent care center overnight for eight weeks due to a lack of doctors. Rural hospitals in the province are cutting hours.

We are a province with many economically comfortable citizens, but many of our neighbors are people who don’t have money for their own medical supplies, people who must decide if they can afford to take a day off work to wait for a doctor. It makes sense for a province with such wealth to care for the most vulnerable to ensure that these world-class health workers remain here, caring for the health of all Albertans.

Heidi Klaassen is a writer and editor from Calgary.