200 Calgary doctors warn emergency rooms 'collapsing' in open letter

A group of nearly 200 Calgary ER doctors is warning, in an open letter to Albertans, that emergency departments are "collapsing" and they're struggling to provide timely and effective care to patients.

"Signs of a capacity crisis are everywhere," the letter reads.

"The wait time in Calgary's emergency departments has skyrocketed, with patients sometimes waiting up to 15 hours to be seen by a doctor. These patients often become sicker while waiting. We worry about these patients every shift."

The 190 doctors involved, who add up to about 75 per cent of those working at Calgary's four adult hospitals, say they're speaking out as independent physicians and not on behalf of Alberta Health Services or the Alberta Medical Association.

"It's so distressing to see patients sick in hallways and in waiting rooms when we want to be providing the care that they need," one of the signatories, ER physician Dr. Katie Lin, said in an interview with CBC News.

"We want to be able to provide 24/7 quality care for our fellow Calgarians, our fellow Albertans, and increasingly we're finding ourselves struggling to be able to do so."

Lin, who works in the emergency rooms at Foothills Medical Centre and Rockyview General Hospital, said that while the stressors are very different than they were at the height of the pandemic, the pressure remains.

According to Lin, patient volumes are still very high and there simply aren't enough beds or staff. That means she's often treating patients in hallways and waiting rooms.

"We've all been in the shoes of the physician who is there on a night shift when the waiting room is packed, there's no spaces available, you're critically short-staffed and you're trying to run a resuscitation in a hallway," she said.

"We've seen patients deteriorate while they're still waiting to be seen. And we've seen the aftermath that that has on all members of the health-care team."

According to the letter, it is common to have between 40 and 50 people waiting to be seen by a doctor at any given time. It says admitted patients can be stuck in the ER waiting for beds on the wards for days, and sections of emergency departments are routinely closed due to staffing shortages.

"We are doing our best every day to provide safe, timely, compassionate care to Albertans, and that has been slowly eroding so much that lately it has felt like a landslide," said Dr. Sean Fair, an ER physician at Rockyview and Foothills.

In an interview with CBC News, Fair said he wants Albertans to know this is a "crisis."

"Truthfully, we are having patients die in the waiting room again. And this is not something that happened in Calgary for many years, by and large."