With the last closure of the service taking place the previous weekend, the announcement marked the 10th time PCH was forced to shut down its obstetrics department since the beginning of September.

According to a press release issued on Dec. 12, the CISSSO is determined to maintain the service. However, to ensure that hospital personnel don’t get overworked, the CISSSO determined that there was no other choice but to take time off and give staff

members a chance to catch their breath.

It added that, since last July, the organization has taken a number of steps in an effort to deal with the serious labour shortage in the region.

Among other things, the actions taken have included soliciting nurses in the Outaouais to offer their services to PCH, the hiring of three new nurses – two of which have started training in obstetrics – and a promotional campaign and intense social media presence geared towards attracting nurses and doctors to the Pontiac.

Actions currently being carried out by CISSSO to address the situation at PCH include an open house event in the Pontiac, the evaluation of the quality and security of the hospital’s obstetrics department as well as work aiming to evaluate the implementation of a system managed by a team of midwives.

The press release added that all pregnant women who have been evaluated at PCH have been contacted and will be transferred to the Gatineau Hospital. In the case of a pregnant woman showing up to PCH in a state of emergency, a qualified staff member will be on location to assist them.

Shortly after the press release was issued, around a dozen members of local media gathered for a press conference at the CISSSO office in Gatineau to get some insight on the matter.

CISSSO’s Director of Nursing Care, Marie-Eve Cloutier, said it was a difficult decision to make and that she recognizes the significant impact the shutdown has on expecting mothers and their loved ones.

“We are working on stabilizing the situation as quickly as possible,” she said. “We didn’t want to have this breach for so long.”

Despite a number of Montreal-based nurses and others from Gatineau making a trips to PCH to fill in gaps over the last few months, Cloutier said that only eight out of 42 nursing shifts in the 21-day window are covered.

“Nurses in the Pontiac take the hospital to heart and they work very hard to maintain the service,” she said. “However, taking into account the amount of resources we have for the period, we took measures with the Ministry of health and social services of Quebec to extend it to Jan. 3.”

She noted that one out of every three nursing shifts at PCH is being carried out on overtime hours.

According to a story published by Radio-Canada at noon that day, a Mansfield et Pontefract woman, Anik Lavigne, is questioning the impact of the staff shortages after her newborn son, Oly, passed away from post-birth complications at three-days old.

Lavigne said she started experiencing serious abdominal pain and internal bleeding, 36 weeks into her pregnancy. Over a stretch of nine days, she consulted professionals at the CLSC in Fort Coulonge, at PCH and even took an ultrasound at the Gatineau hospital. But every time, staff told her everything was normal.

The story explained that Lavigne wasn’t aware, at the time, that PCH had been experiencing a severe labour shortage and that obstetrics services would be repetitively shut down days after the birth of her child.

Once the baby was born by caesarean on the afternoon of Sept. 22, it was discovered that the baby was severely lacking oxygen, which affected his kidneys and liver. Later that evening, the baby was transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), where doctors determined that the child had no cerebral activity. Three days later, Oly was declared deceased with the official cause of death being “hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy”.

In the article, Lavigne said that if an obstetrics specialist was on hand at the time of her arrival at PCH, the death of her child could have potentially been prevented.

During Thursday’s press conference, Cloutier noted that the death had nothing to do with problems with PCH’s obstetrics unit since the hospital had a full staff of qualified, experienced obstetrics nurses on hand.

She added that the Ontario Coroner’s Office is conducting an investigation on the matter and that CISSSO is equally looking into finding ways to improve its services and prevent such an incident from happening again.

“We are putting together measures to make sure we have complete diffusion of the situation … and that we can put together necessary measures to ensure improvement,” Cloutier said.

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