'We need to find a solution': ER wait times cause Moncton area women to speak out

N.B. women frustrated over ER wait times Two women in the Moncton, N.B., area are speaking out following hours of waiting in local emergency rooms. CTV's Alana Pickrell reports.

After about 13 hours of waiting at the Moncton Hospital emergency department, Delaney Moss and her four-and-a-half-month-old daughter Cecilia decided to give up and go home without seeing a doctor.

"I didn't come to the decision lightly,” said Moss. “I called everybody. I tried some walk in clinics. I even called the mother baby clinic because they're always asking about the babies poops, so I figured maybe they would know something and they recommended that I go in and be seen right away. I even called 811. Everything. So the end result was she should be seen.”

They went to the ER for grey stool.

“What I found was that a lot of it has to do with the liver and pancreas, if they have any grey stools. She’s also not gaining weight, so possible failure to thrive type of deal,” she said.

Moss says she was told the wait would have been another three to four hours had she waited.

"It was kind of scary,” she said. “It might not have been an emergency for some people, but for me, you know, she's little and I want to make sure she's taken care of."

Working in health care herself, Moss says she was prepared to wait, but after her experience she wanted to help shine a light on the current situation in the city.

In response to the current wait times at Horizon Hospitals, officials said, in part, that, “patients are triaged and sorted based on urgency, with the most serve cases always seen first. As is the case across Canada, Horizon’s emergency departments experience frequent staffing shortages.”

There is a link that people can check that gives an estimate of ER wait times, but even urgent matters, like shortness of breath and abdominal pain, could take hours to be seen.

Julie Leger, a health-care advocate for New Brunswick, says stories of people waiting to get seen for care is common and the situation is getting worse.

“I fear for my kids’ future here, health wise, and if it’s not us today speaking up, what’s going to happen for the future? Our kids, our parents?”

Adding, “there’s a lot of miscommunication within the system when it comes to all the practitioner itself. We need to try to figure something out, a better system for getting care.”

It was a similar scene at George Dumont Hospital this week for Saly Davis. She said she choked when she tried swallowing water and waited more than 19 hours and had to go back again the next day.

"I was concerned enough to call 811 and then was kind of given a tone of, 'get yourself to the hospital right away,’” she said. “So for someone to get to the point of getting to the hospital and to be treated, kind of discarded, like there's really no reason for the lack of communication from the front to the back and the back to the front."

Adding, “we don’t want to put ourselves through the system and we don’t want the system to be putting us through this.”

In response to inquires from CTV News, Vitalite Health Network said, in part, that, “we are actively working to improve the flow of admissions and discharges as well as to reduce overflow and wait times in the emergency department and to facilitate the management of admissions to a nursing unit.”

Due to patient confidentiality, Vitalite Health Network could not comment on Davis’ specific case.

“We need to work together, better,” said Davis. “These aren’t people coming into the hospital being hostile and mean and vicious. These are people experiencing discomfort and as patients, we’re constantly told, you know, be considerate of the people and the health-care workers. Well, the health-care workers also need to be considerate of the patients that are going in.”

Looking for a solution, Leger says that recruiting is important, but that rendition needs to be a bigger focus.

“Right now, I'm just hoping and praying that the public do realize how bad it is out there right now. We need to find a solution in the system that works within our province."

Leger says she does recognize what the government has done so far, but says there still needs to be improvement and that will only come when everyone starts to work together.

“At the end of the day, if we are speaking out, it is not to degrade our health-care workers, but it is really for us to all sit down together and be like, ‘how did we get here? Who can we point fingers at?” said Davis. “We need to stop saying that policies and procedures are so on and so forth. At what point are we so fallible as human beings to put policy and producers over basic human dignity?”