Putting Surrey Memorial Hospital's ER on diversion may be the only 'responsible recourse,' staff letter says
CTV
Frontline health-care workers at Surrey Memorial Hospital say the emergency room should be shut down to new patients if staff shortages continue to create "perilous" conditions for people in need of urgent care.
Frontline health-care workers at Surrey Memorial Hospital say the emergency room should be shut down to new patients if staff shortages continue to create "perilous" conditions for people in need of urgent care.
In a letter provided to CTV News Tuesday, the Medical Staff Association at the Fraser Health region's largest hospital says it has become difficult and near impossible to provide adequate care due to a shortage of physicians that leaders failed to plan for, and continue to fail in responding to.
"We write this letter not from a place of animosity or retribution, but as people entrusted with advocating for the right of our patients to timely, equitable, high-quality healthcare when they are the most sick and in need of this service. Your continued silence and inaction on this issue is placing the health and well-being of Surrey residents in jeopardy," it reads.
"We implore you to take immediate action to bolster the availability of hospitalists physicians to the ED at SMH and if you cannot do this the only responsible recourse is to place the Surrey Memorial Hospital ER on diversion."
Emergency doctors, the letter says, are being forced to practice outside of their scope by tending to patients in the ER and patients who have been admitted.
"It should come as no surprise then to anyone paying attention that patient care is being compromised, patients are deteriorating, and the number of preventable deaths are rising in our overcrowded and understaffed ER," the letter continues.
The document is the latest to shed light on the crisis unfolding in the emergency departments at Fraser Health's hospitals.
