Ron Prickett of Sault Ste Marie had a bicycle accident at Sauble Beach. He fell after swerving onto a dirt road to avoid a motorbike and his tire skidded on loose stones. Prickett was taken by ambulance to Wiarton Hospital, part of Gray Bruce Health Services. He suffered excruciating pain in a tiny makeshift room in one of the facility’s hallways, with nothing to distract him and unable to turn the lights on or off. “I have a fluorescent light above my head that works outside in the hallway,” he told CBC News on Wednesday. “It’s got plastic sheeting on the walls. It’s not a proper bed. There’s no TV or anything, just bare bones.”
Bed shortage leaves patient stranded at Wiarton
Prickett had to be taken to the London Health Sciences Centre, the largest hospital in southwestern Ontario. He has the facilities and surgical expertise he needs to repair his leg – except, he said, the lack of a bed in London prevented him from leaving Wiarton. Prickett waited to enter the London Health Sciences Centre, pictured here in a file photo. The largest hospital in southwestern Ontario has the facilities and surgical expertise he needs, but he says he’s been told there’s a shortage of staff. (Colin Butler/CBC) “It blows my mind that in Ontario, we have these facilities and I can’t fix a broken bone. I have to lay with a broken bone in my body for four days,” he said. “It’s so disappointing. I have no control. “My family is doing everything they can for me, but there’s nothing they can do. It’s all happening in some boardroom down in London.” A spokesman for London Health Sciences Center said the hospital “has been challenged at near 100% occupancy for months”, but did not say why Prickett had been forced to stay at Wiarton. Mary Margaret Crapper, head of communications and public affairs for Gray Bruce Health Services, told CBC News via email Wednesday that the hospital could not discuss Pricket’s case for “privacy reasons.” He said Wiarton Hospital is “at capacity” and “experiencing staff shortages” and finding a bed could “take time”. “Those waiting in our care for transfer to another facility are closely monitored. We recognize that this wait can be stressful for patients and their families.” Prickett’s experience is the latest example of a provincial health system strained by staff shortages and capacity issues as tired and underpaid hospital workers leave the exhaustion of battling the COVID-19 pandemic in an underfunded health system for more than two years. years.
“Do it,” says the patient to Ford’s government
Earlier this month, Premier Doug Ford called on the federal government to open its purse strings and provide more health care spending to the provinces. But Ontario’s opposition puts the blame squarely on the premier, arguing his penny-pinching policies caused the problem in the first place. A Toronto hospital worker transports a dialysis patient at Humber River Hospital. Stories of overcrowding, staff burnout and unrest have recently emerged from Ontario hospitals. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press) Prickett, who was still lying on the same stretcher that paramedics took him to the hospital on Sunday, borrowed a well-worn line from Ford’s recent campaign to urge politicians to put politics aside and fix the problem. “Get it over with. Support the nurses, support the doctors and monitor it, make it accountable so these things don’t happen. What century are we in? It’s crazy,” he said in a recorded phone message requested by CBC News. to Ontario’s Minister of Health, Sylvia Jones. CBC News emailed the audio message to Ontario Ministry of Health communications staff on Wednesday. Anna Miller, the department’s senior communications adviser, wrote in an email that the message was forwarded to the health secretary’s office, but it was not clear whether Jones heard it. Miller said in the email that the province is making “historic investments,” including an additional $3.3 billion in hospitals in 2022-23, to end health care in the corridor.
