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The viral video of patients in beds in the hallways at Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital (RUH) is a sign of a much broader issue, according to the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN).
Forty-two people were seeking inpatient beds at RUH during its peak demand last week, which the SHA said it had been compounded by the presence of seasonal flu.
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SUN president Bryce Boynton said it was frustrating for the SHA to point to things like seasonal surges.
“The frontline experts, the nurses who are on the ground, doing the work, have been saying that this has been ongoing for years,” Boynton told 980 CJME on Monday.
“This isn’t new; it’s just continuing to grow and build and expand, but in reality, we’ve been over-capacity and understaffed for a long time.”
Boynton said he disapproved of the video being published, saying it broke the privacy and dignity of the patients, but also said the patients being treated out in the hallway was a violation of privacy in itself.
(Video and captions by Lynn Harmon. 650 CKOM blurred the faces of the people in the video to protect their identity.)
“You’re going to be getting very, very tough news in front of your neighbours, who you do not know. You’re going to see elderly people who are not in the best state walking the hallways and not having the privacy they deserve,” Boynton said.
“The video showed the reality of what’s truly happening, even though it followed that reality as well. I do take issue with it breaking that privacy, but the Saskatchewan Health Authority is breaking privacy every day by continuing hallway medicine.”
Boynton said the province needs to listen to the concerns of frontline health-care workers to address the overcapacity and staffing issues.
“The government’s done a lot when it comes to recruitment — (although) we can still do more — but they haven’t done much when it comes to retention, or anything when it comes to retention,” Boynton said.
“We’re seeing the culmination of a system-wide issue now funneling down to these emergency departments. We need to address the shortcomings of our home-care services, we need to ensure we have the appropriate amount of home-care staff available so that people aren’t being discharged from their homes to the emergency departments.”
Boynton also said the province needs to invest in long-term care centres and increase physical space and capacity to meet Saskatchewan’s growing population.
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