A “storage with curtains.”
That’s how a New Brunswick girl described the hospital unit her 88-year-old grandmother was positioned in at a Fredericton hospital whereas she was “confused, frightened, and completely weak.”
Well being officers confirmed the unit is a former ambulance bay, with Premier Susan Holt calling the state of affairs “horrible.”
Within the open letter addressed to Holt, Katarina Lekborg wrote that her grandmother, Theresa, grew to become acutely ailing final Friday and was finally taken to the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital.
The letter, posted on Wednesday night time, detailed how her grandmother was laying on a stretcher.
“Premier Holt, I have to be trustworthy: this isn’t a unit. It’s legitimately the storage with curtains,” wrote Lekborg.
“There isn’t a lavatory. No operating water. No sink to clean palms. She eats inches from the commode she should use to alleviate herself. There isn’t a privateness, a tattered curtain with holes. No doorways.
“The lights are relentless, on all day and all night time. There aren’t any home windows, no strategy to inform the time of day. Paper skinny ‘partitions’; the noise by no means stops.”
International Information has reached out to Lekborg for an interview.
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On Thursday, Holt stated she and the province’s well being minister, John Dornan, have been in contact with Lekborg.
Dornan stated the unit opened simply over a yr in the past as a short lived response to overcrowding. He added it’s the one unit of that sort within the province that he’s conscious of.
“It’s not acceptable. It wasn’t acceptable a yr in the past, it wasn’t acceptable 5 years in the past. And this is the reason we ran for presidency,” stated Dornan.
Holt advised reporters the state of affairs is “horrible” however that the choice can be worse: no care.
“If that MASH unit hadn’t been transitioned by Horizon (Well being Community), then individuals can be exterior within the parking zone. They might be past the ready room. We already know of the tales of individuals in provide closets,” she stated.
The Inexperienced Occasion of New Brunswick Chief David Coon posted a photograph of the unit earlier this week on Fb to deliver consideration to the problem.
“Sufferers caught within the former ambulance bay for days. Lengthy days and nights of the medical workers. We’d like significant motion now,” he wrote.
Inexperienced Occasion of New Brunswick Chief David Coon posted this photograph of the unit on the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital in Fredericton that was an ambulance bay.
David Coon/Fb
Lekborg occurs to be a registered nurse. She wrote in her open letter that the state of affairs on the hospital violates all the basics in care she discovered.
“This surroundings is unsafe, unethical, and unhygienic. It locations sufferers at heightened danger of an infection, harm, and cognitive decline. It’s disorienting to a wholesome individual, not to mention somebody in delirium,” she wrote.
The New Brunswick Nurses Union, of which Lekborg is a member, agrees.
“It isn’t higher than no care in any respect,” stated union president Paula Doucet, in reference to the premier’s feedback.
“Placing a affected person in an ambulance bay isn’t care. That’s truly sweeping the issue off to the aspect with out truly coping with it.”
Lekborg wrote in her letter, which has been shared almost 6,000 occasions on Fb, that her grandmother’s expertise calls for rapid motion.
The nurses’ union is asking for an finish to the unit’s use.
“I’d hope it’s the just one throughout this province, however I’d additionally hope that the directors and authorities would shut this down in a short time,” stated Doucet.
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