REGINA — The official opening of the Saskatchewan Legislature seemed to be upstaged Wednesday with news of more concerns on the health care front.
A letter signed by 450 frontline health-care workers was released this week, demanding action to address the health-care issues seen at emergency rooms across the province. This comes on the heels of recent reports of overcrowding in the hallways outside the emergency department at Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon.
The letter, posted on social media by the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses, was written by Sara Peters, clinical co-ordinator at Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital Adult Emergency Department, and addressed to Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill. It states the following:
“It is the consensus of the ED team that the previously discussed concerns: Emergency Department (ED) overcrowding, nurse and allied health service retention, and the inappropriate use of the ED by consultants for non-urgent care, have had little resolve over the year since our last meeting.
“Of paramount concern is the growing impact of overcrowding on patient safety. When patients are treated in hallways due to lack of space — often without access to call bells, privacy or proper monitoring — the standard of care and access to resources is severely compromised. Hallway nursing has become a normalized crisis response, but it places both patients and providers at significant risk. Delays in assessment, medication administration, or escalation of care can lead to avoidable harm and poor outcomes. These conditions are not only unsustainable — they are unethical and in direct conflict with our mandate to provide timely, dignified and equitable care.”
When asked about the concerns raised at a news conference Wednesday, Premier Scott Moe first said: “Thank you to each of those health-care workers, and not only may have signed and we're raising attention around what is significant capacity pressures that we might have in certain facilities at certain times, but more broadly I think across Saskatchewan Health, the Saskatchewan health authorities’ purview, but also across Canada as well.”
He added that the concerns “very much parallel largely with what we've heard from Saskatchewan people over the course of the past year. And that's why you're seeing investments that are being made, not only in the health human resource plan, in recruiting, retaining and training more people in the province, but you're seeing investments being made in new and innovative ways to deliver health care, new and innovative ways to move people from the emergency room maybe to an urgent care centre, and we've seen that occur here in Regina. And I would say in Saskatoon we're going to see one, not one, but two urgent care centres open as soon as we are able. One is under construction as we speak.”
Moe also pointed to virtual care options being introduced and spoke of the 109 additional acute care beds coming in Saskatoon. He also pledged to keep hiring more health-care workers.
“We're going to keep working on recruiting more health-care practitioners across the board, expanding the scope of all of our health-care practitioners to ensure that they're working at the maximum scope allowable in Canada so that all of our health-care practitioners, professionals that we have, are able to see the patients within the scope that they can practise in this nation.”
At the legislature, Opposition Leader Carla Beck stood alongside Health Critic Meara Conway and Rural and Remote Health Critic Jared Clarke. She criticized the government over the latest concerns out of Saskatoon.
Beck said the approximately 450 health-care workers had “put the Sask Party on blast in a way that I don't think anyone in this province has seen before.”
The NDP leader pointed to “story after story” from patients who have “been stacked in the hallways, forced to go through some of the worst, most difficult days of their life without even the dignity of a curtain around them.”
“We need, and this has never been more clear, we need bold, big, bold changes to our health-care system to get us out of last place. Changes that the Sask Party have proven themselves incapable of bringing in.”
Beck added that on health care, the Throne Speech “definitely does not deliver, definitely does not scream big, bold change.”
“And I quote from page 12 of this Throne Speech, the day after 450 health-care workers put their name to a letter screaming for help. I quote, ‘Saskatchewan's health-care system is ensuring everyone gets the care that they need.’ After 18 years, after all that we see in this province right now, that is what we see in this Throne Speech. I think it tells you everything you need to know about a government that is beyond its best-before date.”
