Overcapacity: Saskatoon ER worker says 'people would die' waiting for care in the event of a disaster

Healthcare workers rallied outside St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon Wednesday, advocating for better conditions in emergency rooms.

Appearing at the rally, NDP leader Carla Beck said a plane bound for Saskatoon last week with 122 people on board experienced mechanical issues and declared an emergency, while the emergency room at the Royal University Hospital (RUH) buckled at 350 per cent capacity.

Beck said for years, health care workers have warned the provincial government that the strain on emergency rooms means there’s no capacity for people should a mass casualty event happen.

Stephanie Fehr, a nurse at St. Paul’s Hospital, said the emergency room sits at 200 per cent capacity everyday.

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“If there was a mass casualty event called, we would call a code orange in the hospital and people would die. We just don't have capacity. We don't have emergency space,” Fehr said.

Beck said if elected, her party would increase staffing in emergency rooms across the province and have the Saskatoon City Hospital’s emergency room run 24/7.

Saskatchewan Party leader Scott Moe said if re-elected, his party will expand on the Health Human Resource Action Plan, which he said is already working to address capacity issues. Moe said under the plan, 1,400 nurses have been hired in the last 18 months.

“And we need to make that plan even more ambitious than it is today to ensure that we are decreasing any disruption that we are seeing, wherever they might be,” he said at a news conference in Saskatoon on Wednesday.

Last year, when the health authority first released its action plan to hire hundreds of permanent health care staff to alleviate pressure in the city’s emergency rooms, Saskatchewan Union of Nurses president Tracy Zambory cautioned the figures were a bit misleading.

"Many of those positions are temporary positions that they've relabeled to permanent positions. So that changes their status and they can put them in a different box," Zambory told CTV News in December.

On Wednesday, Beck said Moe’s remarks on how the current is plan is working is “simply insulting” to health workers across the province.

“Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party still refuse to even admit that there's a problem. We simply have to change this. We have to get Saskatchewan out of last place,” Beck said. 

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