Chris Lowrey
SHAWVILLE June 4, 2018
The Shawville Rotary Club hosted a dinner and information session about the Shawville Hospital’s new dialysis unit.
About 40 people turned up to Café 349 for a scrumptious meal and a presentation by Pontiac Community Hospital (PCH) Foundation board member, Allan Dean, and Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l’Outaouais Director of Nursing, Gail Ryan.
The presentation was kicked off by Dean, who extolled the work that’s been done by the Rotary Club to bring the dialysis unit to fruition.
The Rotary Club has raised $29,508 for the dialysis unit. The total cost of the project is upwards of $2.7 million, $659,626 of which was raised by the PCH Foundation.
“Everyone was amazed at the amount of money our small population has been able to raise,” Dean said.
The yearly operating costs are estimated at $949,000 per year. A $599,000 budget transfer from the Hull Hospital and $350,000 from the Ministry of Health and Social Services will cover the rest of the operational costs.

For those that are unclear what dialysis is, it’s a treatment for those who have suffered from kidney failure. The patient’s kidneys no longer process the waste products from the blood.
As a result, they need hemodialysis, which removes waste products and water from the blood.
Each treatment takes anywhere from two-and-a-half to five hours.
For those who suffer from kidney failure, their only option to get off of dialysis is a kidney transplant.
The dialysis unit will be housed in a former administrative unit at the hospital and Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l’Outaouais (CISSSO) is hopeful the unit will be ready by late August or early September.
Contractors began work at the start of May.
“So far, it’s moving quite well,” Ryan said.
The unit will have the capacity to treat seven patients at once. Six of those stations are in the main area, while one other one will be isolated for patients who are suffering from illnesses like influenza.
Each patient is weighed before and after they come into the unit for treatment. This is done in order to evaluate whether the waste products are being adequately filtered out of the blood.
The scale used to weigh the patients can measure right down to the gram and is programmed according to each patient’s specifications.
Each patient will receive treatments three times per week, which means many people in the Pontiac will now be able to avoid the long drives into Gatineau.
The unit will be open six days per week and will have two groups of patients go through each day.
Capacity could eventually be increased from seven patients to 11. Ryan also said the unit could eventually have a capacity of 30 chairs.
Currently, CISSSO staff are in the process of recruiting staff for the unit. Ryan said that the usual ratio is one nurse for every four stations, but in Shawville’s case it will be one nurse for every three stations.
The on-site water treatment system will filter out any of the waste products before it is sent out of the hospital. The system has the capacity to handle 20 chairs in the unit.
Ryan said the unit will vastly improve the quality of life of those who are currently driving to and from Gatineau. She would know, after all, her mother has been receiving dialysis treatments for 12 years.
“It’s like doing a full day of work,” Ryan said. “The body is exhausted.”
She said the fact that residents won’t have to endure long stretches in a vehicle will make the treatments more bearable.
Not only will the addition of the dialysis unit help residents of the Pontiac, but Ryan said it will also help the hospital itself.
“To have another add-on to the services this hospital provides is so important to the longevity of the hospital,” she said.