CALEB NICKERSON

SHAWVILLE July 24, 2019

The Pontiac Community Hospital (PCH) will face a month-long interruption to obstetrics services starting at the end of this week unless . . .

drastic action is taken by local authorities.

Interruptions to obstetrics have occurred earlier in the year, but this occasion will be different, according to the PCH’s manager of Short Term Care and General Care, Natalie Romain.

“We have a shortage of nurses,” she said. “It’s not just here, it’s everywhere.”

According to Romain, several factors led up to this breach in services, which, at the time of print, is scheduled to begin on Friday July 25 at 4 p.m. and last at least a month.

In recent months, four nurses trained in obstetrics have gone on maternity leave and aren’t scheduled back for another year, while another four have transferred to other departments (two to dialysis and two to emergency). Along with staff injuries or people moving away, the situation became more and more critical as months went by.

She said that since the remaining eight RNs work in 12 hour shifts, so many nurses rack up a considerable amount of overtime if anyone is sick or missing from the alternate shift. Romain said that she’s done everything she could to keep the obstetrics unit open, but with summer holidays it came to a head, and they were forced to temporarily halt their services.

“I want people to get the straight answer,” she said. “They’re upset, I feel for them, but they need to understand there is a shortage of nurses. They can’t work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They need their holidays too.”

Expectant mothers in the region will have to head to the hospital in Gatineau or Pembroke, depending on their location.

Claudee Galipeau is an expectant mother from Fort Coulonge. Though her baby isn’t due until mid-September, she said the possibility of travelling an additional hour to Gatineau was not at all what she had envisioned.

“It’s super stressful,” she said. “I get that we’re not the only region that has had interruptions of services in obstetrics … That means that there’s an overall problem with our retention and recruitment efforts across the board, province wide.”

Galipeau said that her first child was born at PCH and she hoped to do the same the second time around.

“I don’t want to deliver in Gatineau,” she said. “My first experience in Shawville was wonderful. The staff was wonderful, you feel at home.”

Romain said the Centre intégré de santé et des services sociaux de l’Outaouais (CISSSO) has been made aware of the staffing issues, but the situation continued to fester.

“They were aware, this is not something we’ve just decided to let them know,” she said. “They were aware months ago.”

To make matters worse, this August is particularly busy for births, with Romain counting approximately 18, when they typically average around 10. She said that in the case of an imminent birth, where there is no time for an hour-plus trip to the city, PCH staff will make the delivery short-handed, but it’s not an optimal situation by any means.

“If a lady wakes up and knows [she’s] not going to make it to Gatineau, they know to present themselves up here,” she said. “They will deliver her here because we don’t have a choice … It’s fine and dandy if the delivery goes fine, [but] when a woman delivers quickly, there’s all sorts of consequences.”

Once the birth is complete, the mother and child will be transferred to Gatineau.

Pontiac MNA and Liberal health critic André Fortin, in an interview on July 22, said that he had spoken with the head of CISSSO, Josée Filion, as well as Health Minister Danielle McCann’s chief of staff.

“My own view of things is that a couple of days, as we experienced earlier in the [year] was already too much, now we’re talking about a potential break in services for about a month. That’s simply not acceptable,” he said. He also said that they were looking at ways to shorten the interruption but added that the overarching issue of worker shortages needed to be addressed as well.

“There really has to be a concerted strategy to attract and retain nurses, because there is a nurse shortage right across the province,” he said. “The government has to look at conditions of work as well. That’s been an issue brought forward by nurse unions as well. Forced overtime has increased dramatically and that’s something that has to be addressed. It puts a real stress on nurses that they don’t know when their shift is going to end.”

He also said that the training for rural doctors in the province should be examined to reflect the reality of the situation.

“Rural doctors are definitely doing many different things and they’re called on to do many different things … in a day’s work hours that aren’t necessarily the things you see in city hospitals,” he said, and that the curriculum in Quebec’s medical schools “certainly has to address that.”

Romain said that the reasons for the shortage of nurses in the Outaouais are numerous, including language testing that excludes Anglophone residents and higher wages in Ontario. She said that unless drastic changes are made to ease the burden on her staff, these kinds of interruptions won’t stop once the summer’s over.

“Unless Mr. Fortin drives me up a bus full of nurses, I can’t see it,” she said. “Even the people back from their holidays … There’s always some [nurses] that do a lot of overtime. They get burnt out though; they can only do so much. I’m kind of afraid I don’t see it getting any better.”

She added that in an optimal situation, she would have at least four to six more nurses in obstetrics, not to mention other departments.

As of July 22, CISSSO representatives referred to the situation as a “potential” interruption, and have not issued any public statements about the situation.

CISSSO representative Patricia Rhéaume asserted in an email that they are committed to “quality local services,” but when asked by The Equity what concrete steps CISSSO had taken to support such services, she didn’t respond in time for print.

She did write that CISSSO was “establishing service corridors to ensure the safety of public health care,” but didn’t respond to a follow up email that asked her to clarify what a service corridor is, where they are being implemented or how they could improve PCH’s obstetrics services.