Western Standard - Alberta doctor says hospital capacity numbers manipulated by AHS

00:00:00.000 I actually asked for it last night because I got a very very disturbing phone call from a very good

00:00:12.440 friend who's deep inside the political system and and it literally has my wife was eating supper and 0.62

00:00:18.660 I almost threw up it was very very disturbing and the things that the trajectory around here it just

00:00:27.180 it just stopped me dead and so this is the reason I'm here today is because we're in a lot of trouble

00:00:34.980 if we don't stand up so the question is are we in a crisis with our hospitals right now I worked

00:00:41.700 I have no idea when I worked last I've worked every night this week almost and so my last shift

00:00:50.780 was very slow there's been slow and quick days but it's definitely slowed down if you look at

00:00:56.760 so I got one of my friends to send me the numbers from the U of A last night and and the day before

00:01:03.660 our lockdown I texted one of my political friends and I says oh we must be heading into lockdown

00:01:08.220 because the numbers are starting to droop as soon as they droop they put us in lockdown so it looks

00:01:11.720 like the lockdown fixed everything and they've done this every time and I know because I see the

00:01:16.180 numbers and so you know that if you're into one and a half days or two days of a droop we're going

00:01:20.720 to have a lockdown because if it gets better then of course it fixed it so I looked into the U of A

00:01:25.440 numbers that definitely three days they've been trending down and I my last shift I had zero

00:01:31.980 patients for about three hours and so I chit-chatted seems it was probably my last day so I you know I

00:01:39.660 haven't looked I don't I don't go on social media I don't listen to the news I don't watch television

00:01:44.280 always and I don't do any of that nonsense um and I don't think I've AHS doubt because I have

00:01:50.820 absolutely zero effect on who I'm going to see next I'm going to treat the next person that texts me or

00:01:55.620 comes into my department and I really don't care how many were there before them and no I've never

00:02:00.840 had a problem the only reason I can't get to see people in my department and I have to be careful what

00:02:07.580 I say I'm glad there is a lawyer here so just hit me if I say something I shouldn't so about six years

00:02:14.120 ago we had a government come in and about two years into their mandate they started cutting back nurse

00:02:19.100 positions in our department and if you remember hit the red hair advocate there was a big story of how

00:02:25.160 the world was falling apart and actually I was the head of the department at the time so I wrote a

00:02:29.120 little op-ed or whatever and they messed it all up and printed what they wanted so we as a department

00:02:35.480 wrote a letter back and they just thought that was last week we're not really interested anymore

00:02:39.140 so they ever printed their actual true story and we were on we had to redirect people out of the

00:02:43.980 hospital and to other hospitals and we're the we're the intake hospital for central zone you can't do

00:02:49.400 that you can't send a heart attack to look home they don't they don't send us but this is what we're

00:02:53.940 doing and it's because we had no staff so as I say I got 55 positions 55 spots in that department

00:03:00.340 every night at 11 30 we close 17 of them because we don't have enough money stamp or whatever it is

00:03:05.180 and then if I have 20 admitted patients because I can't get them out of my department in the

00:03:10.420 hospital because the hospital is full and the hospital is full because I can't get them out

00:03:13.420 of the hospital because I can't send them anywhere because we have no support in that home so they

00:03:18.580 end up in the hospital for days or years and then they back up into my department so if I have 20

00:03:24.080 admitted patients I have 55 to start with they take 17 away I'm at 38 I think right and I take 20 out of

00:03:29.440 that I'm not out to 18 beds it takes me five hours to run through the average patient you do the math

00:03:34.320 I have four doctors standing there I can see three patients an hour times four doctors I can see

00:03:38.400 that in an hour but I can't because they take five hours to run so that's why you get a five hour

00:03:44.680 right wait because I have nowhere to see you so it has nothing to do with code it has been going on

00:03:50.120 for six years and it was created and we have a crisis and we have a crisis because we have no staff

00:03:56.720 because our staff quit because they're burned out they're not burned out from code but I had a staff

00:04:01.120 come up to me last night I was working with me since I got there as a resident in 2000

00:04:05.940 forever and she's been there for 30 years she quit last night she was crying she's she's a very senior

00:04:13.580 nurse and she said I'm packing up my locker tonight I'm not telling anybody and I'm done she said one of

00:04:20.000 your colleagues called me a waste of skin because I'm not vaccinated so this is somebody who worked 0.92

00:04:24.860 there for 18 months unvaccinated that thought afraid unvaccinated front lines who walked out

00:04:30.520 of there last night that was my last night too probably last night and because my colleagues

00:04:35.800 called her a waste of skin because she wouldn't get vaccinated that's the crisis we have I got an 1.00

00:04:40.420 email text last night from a person who's in MO and they said that 425 ICU and critical care staff

00:04:48.360 have quit over whatever I said yeah I know they have I have lost at least 30 in my department

00:04:53.640 and I can tell you that they're not quitting because COVID's burning them out they're burning

00:04:58.420 out for that the crisis that is being created is burning on our staff and this is a mess but we have

00:05:07.500 capacity to deal with what we have we have 8,000 beds in Alberta we got 900 COVID patients I don't

00:05:13.220 know what our ICU last night was 212 or something like that and I know exactly how many ICU beds we have

00:05:19.660 I also know that we can double capacity to every ICU in Alberta like quickly so so if you take

00:05:25.780 we have 897 ICU beds in Alberta or we did actually before the start it's funny we got less today which

00:05:31.520 is really strange I didn't know we'd do that in the pandemic but so we had 897 some of the PICU and NICU

00:05:37.400 and I understand we're not but but the 70 year old patient in a PICU or NICU department so take out

00:05:42.480 some of that but I also know that since 2009 we've had a whole bunch of ventilators kick around

00:05:48.520 because we thought everybody was going to die that time and we still have them and I know how

00:05:52.920 to run them and all those nurses in my department know how to run them and RTs obviously know how 0.99

00:05:57.020 to run them so everybody in my hospital knows how to run a ventilator but nobody knows where they are

00:06:02.040 and so we have 2,500 ventilators and have 12 or 212 or 250 COVID patients that's a lot there's no

00:06:10.320 arguing this is something we have to deal with but we can do it so I'm not sure what's going on I

00:06:16.800 really don't but we treat the patients that come in to us and and some of this crisis is anyway I don't understand

Western Standard - September 22, 2021

Alberta doctor says hospital capacity numbers manipulated by AHS

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