‘Too little, too late’ to help CHSLDS, doctors argue
Many point out that conditions leading to crisis situation took years to develop
It’s been the perfect storm.
All the elements for what is now raging at some seniors residences in Quebec have long been in place: negligence, fear, lack of personnel, lack of personal protective equipment, lack of training, lack of inspections, lack of funding, lack of leadership. All it took was the COVID-19 pandemic to bring all these elements together and to create the kind of chaos that is now killing our senior citizens at alarming rates. The consequences of which have been so frighteningly unfolding at, among other residences, Dorval’s CHSLD Herron, the Sud-ouest borough’s CHSLD Yvon-brunet and Shawinigan’s CHSLD Laflèche.
Health professionals have been largely appalled by conditions at numerous public and private nursing homes in the province, but many point out that the situation has been festering here for years.
Premier Legault announced Monday that more resources and staff would be deployed to seniors residences and felt that, while the situation was “far from perfect,” conditions at most were “stable” and that residents were “well treated.” He also noted that 2,600 public and private residences for the elderly would be inspected.
A family physician on the front lines of a local CHSLD welcomes increased government help, but remains pessimistic. He has been left devastated. His residence has already recorded over a dozen deaths due to COVID -19 complications and another 12 residents who have tested positive for the coronavirus.
“It is too little, too late,” said the subdued doctor, with whom I’m acquainted but who has been advised by authorities to withhold his identity. “We have never seen anything like this.
COVID-19 spreads like an invisible wildfire.
“But even before the virus arrived in Canada, it was well known that the elderly are most at risk. Despite this knowledge, the virus is now established in many residences across the province, and it’s likely too late for some. What we’re seeing now is but the tip of the iceberg.”
The physician, along with others working at these residences, had been pleading with authorities for weeks in seeking to have all occupants tested. Further hindering the situation is the perception that the rules, regarding the managing, testing and protecting of patients, seem to be changing on the fly, with everyone playing catch-up.
“Unfortunately, no one from public health came to many of the residences until the situation was brought to light recently,” the physician said. “By then, staff became sick or didn’t show up for work at all, due to health fears compounded by shortages of protective equipment. Nurses who showed up are the unsung heroes. They are burnt out, and many have fallen ill.
“I realize initial priorities may have been to bolster hospital capacity and test the general public, but the administrative failure and helplessness we feel on the front line of senior care will haunt many of us forever.”
Another physician, with 40 years medical experience here, was even more blunt in assessing current conditions at long-term senior care facilities.
“The reason I keep working at my age is two-fold: I love my job but I also want to be able to retire with enough money that I can live out my remaining years with full-time care at home and not at a seniors residence,” said the doctor, a longtime acquaintance who also wished not to be identified. “I never want to end up at one. It’s just so disgusting to hear what’s happening now.
“I really feel for those who have had to place parents or family members at these residences. Residents have had to deal with terrible conditions for years and years. I don’t mean to be crass, but it’s become like a business where the elderly are essentially being warehoused. They are understaffed and underfunded. It’s a system problem.”
Over the course of his career, he has worked everywhere from hospital emergency wards to nursing homes. He is presently a “hospitalist,” working hospital wards other than emergency.
“While the doctors come in a few times a week, it’s really the nurses, orderlies and (auxiliary) staff at these long-term residences who do 90 per cent of the work and take so many of the risks,” he said.
Dr. Rob Drummond, an emergency-room physician at St. Mary’s Hospital, has been involved with numerous COVID -19 cases and has performed several intubations of late. Yet while he’s feeling increased stress on the job, his heart really goes out to nurses at St. Mary’s and other hospitals who volunteered their services after-hours at some of the troubled CHSLDS.
“I’m just so impressed by their professionalism,” he said. “They weren’t initially mandated to do this, but they knew what they were getting into at the long-term facilities and the risks entailed. Orderlies, too, were just as exposed. They were giving dehydrated residents covered in urine and feces bed baths, then coming back home crying at what they had witnessed.
“That goes well beyond the call of duty.”