Saskatchewan's largest hospital hits crisis point as overstuffed ER runs out of stretchers and oxygen

Staff at Saskatoon's Royal University Hospital (RUH) are calling for systemic changes just two days after its emergency room was more than three times above its capacity.

"It's worse than it ever has been," NDP Saskatoon Fairview candidate Vicki Mowat said outside of the hospital Thursday morning.

"We don't have time to wait for help. When you have admitted patients in a hospital that don't even have a chair to sit in, things are at a breaking point."

Vicki Mowat speaking to reporters at the Saskatchewan Legislative Building on Dec. 20, 2023. (Courtesy: Saskatchewan NDP)

According to data from the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN), the RUH emergency room was at 350 per cent capacity overnight Tuesday — with 121 patients for 35 beds.

The union says there were 50 patients admitted with no beds, 25 people being treated in hallway beds and 10 ambulances were delayed in the paramedic bay treating patients because there was nowhere for them to go.

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Mowat said the hospital ran out of stretchers and oxygen as other nearby healthcare facilities weren't accepting patients any longer. Patients outnumbered RUH nursing staff 14 to one.

"Saskatoon deserves better. Our families deserve better. Our health care workers deserve better," Mowat said.

Hundreds of healthcare workers and union representatives rallied outside of the legislature in Regina Thursday to call for help amid the healthcare crisis and staffing shortages.

"How do you safely care for patients in a busy emergency room when you are routinely 200 per cent overcapacity, beds line hallways, and critical care happens out in the open in waiting room chairs, all while you are working seven registered nurses short,” SUN president Tracy Zambory said in a news release.

Saskatchewan Union of Nurses president Tracy Zambory speaks to the media after a rally organized by Saskatchewan Union of Nurses outside of the legislature on Thursday, October 3, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Heywood Yu

Speaking at a campaign announcement in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan Party leader Scott Moe said hospital overcrowding is a "challenge," and he is committed to working with healthcare professionals to improve the system, if re-elected.

"We will commit to ensuring that happens into the future," Moe said. "And we are starting to have results, but there's more work to do."

After years of nurses and other health professionals asking for more input and calling for a nursing task force, the province agreed to create one days before the election period began.

Moe spoke about the health human resource action plan his government announced two years ago, and how it's seeing benefits, but there's more work to be done.

"Admittedly, there is much more work to do here, and the health human resource plan has not certainly found its way to the end of this work.," he said.

"This is a government that has been fully committed to not only working with frontline staff and our organizations across the health care sector on new and innovative ways to offer health care. But then putting the funding behind those discussions."

Mowat says this government has rarely taken the opportunity to sit down and listen to concerns from healthcare workers, and the action plan isn't cutting it.

"The plan isn't working, and it makes sense because they didn't consult healthcare workers in creating that plan," Mowat said.

"They've had 17 years in government to fix health care, and they haven't done it."

Mowat said if elected, the NDP would open Saskatoon's City Hospital emergency room 24 hours a day to help alleviate capacity issues at RUH. She says her party would also work together with post-secondary institutions, unions and staff in multiple sectors of healthcare to give them a voice in decisions and help create a culture where workers are retained.

In a survey of its own membership last month, the nurses’ union says 86 per cent of registered nurses are reporting patient risk due to short staffing and 60 per cent have considered leaving the profession in the last 12 months.

Moe said the Sask. Party isn't ruling out systemic changes, either.

"Looking at delivering health care a little bit different is something that we're most certainly open to," Moe said.