Alberta doctor says hospital capacity numbers manipulated by AHS
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about a very disturbing phone call I received last night from a very good friend of mine who is deep inside the political system and I almost threw up. It was so disturbing that it just stopped me dead in my tracks.
Transcript
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I actually asked for it last night because I got a very very disturbing phone call from a very good
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friend who's deep inside the political system and and it literally has my wife was eating supper and
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I almost threw up it was very very disturbing and the things that the trajectory around here it just
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it just stopped me dead and so this is the reason I'm here today is because we're in a lot of trouble
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if we don't stand up so the question is are we in a crisis with our hospitals right now I worked
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I have no idea when I worked last I've worked every night this week almost and so my last shift
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was very slow there's been slow and quick days but it's definitely slowed down if you look at
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so I got one of my friends to send me the numbers from the U of A last night and and the day before
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our lockdown I texted one of my political friends and I says oh we must be heading into lockdown
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because the numbers are starting to droop as soon as they droop they put us in lockdown so it looks
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like the lockdown fixed everything and they've done this every time and I know because I see the
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numbers and so you know that if you're into one and a half days or two days of a droop we're going
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to have a lockdown because if it gets better then of course it fixed it so I looked into the U of A
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numbers that definitely three days they've been trending down and I my last shift I had zero
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patients for about three hours and so I chit-chatted seems it was probably my last day so I you know I
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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
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always and I don't do any of that nonsense um and I don't think I've AHS doubt because I have
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absolutely zero effect on who I'm going to see next I'm going to treat the next person that texts me or
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comes into my department and I really don't care how many were there before them and no I've never
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had a problem the only reason I can't get to see people in my department and I have to be careful what
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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
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ago we had a government come in and about two years into their mandate they started cutting back nurse
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positions in our department and if you remember hit the red hair advocate there was a big story of how
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the world was falling apart and actually I was the head of the department at the time so I wrote a
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little op-ed or whatever and they messed it all up and printed what they wanted so we as a department
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wrote a letter back and they just thought that was last week we're not really interested anymore
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so they ever printed their actual true story and we were on we had to redirect people out of the
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hospital and to other hospitals and we're the we're the intake hospital for central zone you can't do
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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
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doing and it's because we had no staff so as I say I got 55 positions 55 spots in that department
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every night at 11 30 we close 17 of them because we don't have enough money stamp or whatever it is
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and then if I have 20 admitted patients because I can't get them out of my department in the
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hospital because the hospital is full and the hospital is full because I can't get them out
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of the hospital because I can't send them anywhere because we have no support in that home so they
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end up in the hospital for days or years and then they back up into my department so if I have 20
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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
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that I'm not out to 18 beds it takes me five hours to run through the average patient you do the math
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I have four doctors standing there I can see three patients an hour times four doctors I can see
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that in an hour but I can't because they take five hours to run so that's why you get a five hour
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right wait because I have nowhere to see you so it has nothing to do with code it has been going on
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for six years and it was created and we have a crisis and we have a crisis because we have no staff
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because our staff quit because they're burned out they're not burned out from code but I had a staff
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come up to me last night I was working with me since I got there as a resident in 2000
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forever and she's been there for 30 years she quit last night she was crying she's she's a very senior
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nurse and she said I'm packing up my locker tonight I'm not telling anybody and I'm done she said one of
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your colleagues called me a waste of skin because I'm not vaccinated so this is somebody who worked
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there for 18 months unvaccinated that thought afraid unvaccinated front lines who walked out
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of there last night that was my last night too probably last night and because my colleagues
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called her a waste of skin because she wouldn't get vaccinated that's the crisis we have I got an
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email text last night from a person who's in MO and they said that 425 ICU and critical care staff
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have quit over whatever I said yeah I know they have I have lost at least 30 in my department
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and I can tell you that they're not quitting because COVID's burning them out they're burning
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out for that the crisis that is being created is burning on our staff and this is a mess but we have
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capacity to deal with what we have we have 8,000 beds in Alberta we got 900 COVID patients I don't
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know what our ICU last night was 212 or something like that and I know exactly how many ICU beds we have
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I also know that we can double capacity to every ICU in Alberta like quickly so so if you take
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we have 897 ICU beds in Alberta or we did actually before the start it's funny we got less today which
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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
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and I understand we're not but but the 70 year old patient in a PICU or NICU department so take out
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some of that but I also know that since 2009 we've had a whole bunch of ventilators kick around
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because we thought everybody was going to die that time and we still have them and I know how
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to run them and all those nurses in my department know how to run them and RTs obviously know how
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to run them so everybody in my hospital knows how to run a ventilator but nobody knows where they are
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and so we have 2,500 ventilators and have 12 or 212 or 250 COVID patients that's a lot there's no
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arguing this is something we have to deal with but we can do it so I'm not sure what's going on I
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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