Fredericton ER filthy and overflowing during holidays, visitors say
CBC
As Tim Brooks left a hospital washroom where garbage and urine had spread on the floor, he saw a partially dressed patient on a stretcher in the emergency department.
Brooks covered the patient with a blanket and went back to the chair where he'd been sitting for hours, waiting for a hospital bed.
"I saw the looks on the nurses' faces," he said of his holiday experience at the Fredericton emergency department. "I could hear them speaking, hear the worry in their voices.
"There were patients in the hallways of the emergency room, [having] all kinds of varying degrees of need of help."
Brooks, who had pneumonia, arrived at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton at 11 a.m. on Dec. 27. People were lined up along the hallway to the entrance of the emergency room, but since Brooks was on the verge of losing consciousness, he said, he was seen right away.
Others weren't so lucky.
A sign on the door warned people they'd be waiting 18 to 20 hours to receive care. Brooks said he watched people throw up in the hallways.
Staffing shortages, a high number of patients and a lack of beds caused several hospitals in New Brunswick to issue advisories and even close some departments in the last week of December.
Many hospitals continue to face closures and challenges, including the Enfant-Jésus RHSJ Hospital in Caraquet, which Vitalité Health Network told CBC News has an occupancy rate of 182 per cent.
A Horizon Health spokesperson would not be interviewed, but the network said in a statement to CBC News that its emergency departments remain "extremely busy" this week.
"Patients with anything less than a life-threatening or emergency medical need will likely experience longer than normal wait times for care in our EDs as we continue to navigate these challenges."
Brooks, who lives in Riverview but was in Fredericton to see family, said he tried to access the online dashboard that displays emergency room wait times before going to the hospital, but the website was down for maintenance. He decided to go anyway.
"It was like nothing I'd ever seen before," said the teacher, who didn't leave the Chalmers until New Year's Eve.
After waiting in an isolated area for at least 10 hours, near the nurses' station, Brooks was taken somewhere to sleep. After the second night, he was finally brought upstairs to a different room — except it wasn't a room.
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